Tenant Satisfaction Measures – What Shared Owner residents told us
It is now a requirement for all landlords, like settle, to publish data to our Regulator each year, showing results against 22 Tenant Satisfaction Measures
At the end of June, we published our latest results against the full Tenant Satisfaction Measures on our website and also submitted this data collected from almost 1,400 residents between April 2023 and the end of March 2024 to the Regulator.
Shared Owners
Earlier this year, our research partner, Acuity Research and Practice, who carry out surveys with residents on our behalf, surveyed some of settle’s shared owners for the 2023/24 year and we have posted these results our website – Tenant Satisfaction Measures- Shared Owners. A total of 134 responses were received for this survey, just over 20% of shared owner residents. We do not have to report this data collected to the Regulator as we currently have 664 homes with shared owner residents, and we are only required to report on over 1,000 homes.
Overall satisfaction
Taking everything into account, when it comes to overall satisfaction, 18% of respondents said they were dissatisfied.
62% of shared owner residents said that they were satisfied with services overall, while 20% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
Positively, 79% of residents told us they felt safe in their homes. Residents were asked if they were satisfied with the overall quality of their home, and almost three quarters (74%) said they were satisfied, 15% were neither satisfied or dissatisfied and 11% were dissatisfied with the quality of their home.
Communal areas
42% of shared owner residents who responded are dissatisfied that communal areas are clean and well maintained, making it one of the highest dissatisfaction rates in the survey. 47% of residents were satisfied and 11% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.
We are continuously working to act on the feedback we’ve received to improve our services and aim to make sure dissatisfaction is less than 20%.
Some of the improvements we have introduced recently in response to resident feedback include:
- More frequent and regular post-inspections to ensure quality of work in our communal spaces and green areas. We are planning to carry out random quality checks and use these outcomes to review and help influence the shape of our services going forward.
- Agreeing a new window cleaning contractor which we aim to be in place by the end of the summer 2024.
- Identifying where we can make improvements to our overall soft landscape features with things like additional planting and cleaning of pathways.
- Throughout the year (March 2023 to April 2024), we also carried out neighbourhood action days where dissatisfaction around the quality of the neighbourhood and communal spaces was lowest to help us to understand how residents feel and what we could do to make improvements.
How we handle complaints
Throughout the year, we have continued to work hard to ensure we respond to complaints quickly, putting things right and learning from when things have gone wrong. We have seen strong ongoing performance with 98% of all complaints responded to within the Housing Ombudsman timeframes.
Only 33% of shared owner residents surveyed said they were satisfied with our approach to handling complaints.
Dissatisfaction may be due to some residents answering this question based on their experience, perhaps reporting a service request, a complaint about anti-social behavior or something that is happening in their neighbourhood, without having raised this as a formal complaint to us.
We are committed to improving our complaint handling processes to ensure residents know their rights and what to expect from us when things go wrong. We will always:
- Call residents in the first instance or contact them by their preferred method of contact to ensure we fully understand their complaint and the outcome they are hoping for.
- Let residents know how long it is likely to take and any next steps.
- Provide residents with a point of contact for any questions they may have.
We will also continue to improve how we handle complaints. This year we have set all colleagues at settle an objective focused on the areas we know are important to residents: improving communication, responding to complaints promptly and learning from when things have gone wrong.
Listens and acts
35% of residents who responded said they were dissatisfied with how we listen and act. The areas where residents would like to see improvements include quicker response times to carry out repairs and resolve issues, and around communication and information. Some residents said that they usually felt that we listen to their concerns, but we fail to address them appropriately. 41% of residents were satisfied with how we listen and act while 23% didn’t feel strongly either way.
In response Listen and Act group was set up in July 2023 for colleagues to come together regularly to review feedback we get from residents including that from tenant satisfaction measures. Each quarter colleagues look into a topic to discuss ways that we can make improvements, for example, we recently looked at how we could increase resident satisfaction around communal spaces.
When it comes to our approach to handling anti-social behaviour, 37% of residents were satisfied. 44% were neither satisfied or dissatisfied, while 19% outwardly said they were dissatisfied.
Some of the actions we are taking to ensure residents feel safe and comfortable in their homes and surrounding community include:
- Delivering community safety events in emerging “hot spot” areas of ASB and utilising data and local knowledge to provide information, advice and reassurance to residents that is supported by partner agencies.
- Delivering regular training that supports improved case management approaches and refreshes legal understanding.
- Providing information about services available from statutory and other agencies. This includes referring matters to the Police when it is a criminal act as settle do not have legal powers to investigate crime.
Trust and Effort
More than half of the residents who respond say that they trust us (57%) and around two thirds find us easy to deal with (65%).
The scores we have achieved are driven by the resident engagement we have completed throughout the year as well as making sure to listen and put plans in place where improvements are needed.
