Tenant Satisfaction Measures – what residents are telling us six months on
In June this year, as required by the Regulator of Social Housing, We published our first set of data against the tenant satisfaction measures. We’re committed to tracking our progress and ensuring that we are improving on these measures. We are pleased to publish results from April 2024 to September 2024, ahead of the next set of results that the regulator will require us to publish in June 2025.
The Tenant Satisfaction Measures from April 2024 to September 2024 includes feedback collected from over 600 residents in that period. The latest results are available to view on our Tenant Satisfaction Measures page and in this infographic.
We use this feedback to identify areas of dissatisfaction that require improvement and focus on addressing these areas to improve resident satisfaction.
What You Told Us
Overall satisfaction
Our overall score for tenant satisfaction, using data provided between April and September 2024 shows that 76% of residents said they were very satisfied or satisfied with Settle as a landlord. A further 10% were neutral, which meant that 86% of residents were satisfied or okay with Settle. 14% were dissatisfied. While this figure has improved by 6% since our end of year score in March 2024, we continue to take a targeted approach to understand the underlying reasons behind residents’ dissatisfaction and address them.
Trust and Effort
We’re proud to report that you rated us with a trust score of 7.26 (against a target of 7.2; higher is better), and for the effort it takes for you to interact with us, we scored 2.81 (against a target to be below 4, where lower is better). 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.
Click to view infographic Tenant Satisfaction Measures from April 2024 to September 2024.
Areas in need of improvement
The main areas where we know that we need to make improvements are around: how we handle complaints, the time taken to carry out repairs, communication and keeping you informed, along with our approach to anti-social behaviour.
Complaints handling
Only 174 residents responded to this question; however, almost half (48.9%) expressed dissatisfaction with how we handle complaints, while almost 38% were satisfied. We continue to work hard to ensure we respond to complaints quickly, putting things right and learning from when things have gone wrong. We’ve already made progress by responding to a higher number of complaints within the Housing Ombudsman’s timeframes.
Following the changes to the complaint handling code last year, we’ve experienced an increase in the number of complaints being recorded. We welcome the fact that more residents are contacting us to raise a complaint, and we have taken steps to improve our triage and approach to managing communication and post-complaint actions.
Despite the increase in volume, we have also continued to manage our timeframe for responses and are focused on reducing the time taken to deliver the commitments made in our complaint response.
Repairs
We often see great feedback when Settle colleagues have completed a repair, but we recognise the need to continue to improve. The tenant satisfaction measures provide us with an opportunity to hear where we can do better when it comes to repairs. In the latest results, 29.4% of residents survey were dissatisfied with the time it took to carry out a repair, and 24% with the overall repairs service.
We recognise the need to continue to improve our repairs service, and we’re working on reducing wait times and enhancing communication throughout the repair journey, especially to:
- Provide repairs more quickly
- Get it right the first time, reducing the need for follow-up visits
- Keep you informed throughout the process, particularly when delays occur.
We are also one year into our repairs improvement plan and are continuing to work hard to make the improvements needed, including completing half the actions on that plan. We have also increased our use of contractors to enable us to complete more repairs during busier times of the year, tightened controls over our work planning, and improved our use of technology to help us work more efficiently.
As a result of these improvements, we’re completing more repairs now than when we started, and we’ll continue to update you on our progress.
Communicating with you
When it comes to how we listen and act, over 29% were dissatisfied and 16.7% were dissatisfied with how we keep you informed. We know that we need to improve how we communicate with residents and are currently reviewing how we communicate across key areas like repairs, complaints, and communal work to ensure that every interaction counts.
Communal areas
A quarter were dissatisfied with how well we keep communal areas clean and well-maintained.
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%. Most comments were around the cleanliness of communal blocks, with fewer regarding grounds maintenance. We have also identified that, similarly to complaints, residents may be responding to this question in areas where Settle is not responsible for the communal space.
We are also working to ensure that more regular inspections are taking place to ensure our contractors are delivering the work they are doing to the standards we expect and that residents have access to easier reporting when they want to raise an issue with us.
Anti-social behaviour and neighbourhoods
Some residents feel we could do more to support the community. 28% feel we could do better with our approach to handling anti-social behaviour. We know that when it comes to recording feedback around anti-social behaviour, some residents’ perception of what anti-social behaviour is may be different to how we categorise it. We will carry out a deep dive to understand what the perceptions are against what is being reported. We are also working with our Voice of the Resident panel to improve our communications in this area.
Additionally, 19.3% feel there’s room for improvement when it comes to making a positive impact in neighbourhoods. We’ll continue to focus on making our communities better for everyone and have recently carried out a Big Door Knock in one of our bigger neighbourhoods to understand what residents think of the area, what needs to be improved and what we can do to support that.
We are grateful to residents who took part in our tenant satisfaction measures surveys. For more details, visit our tenant satisfaction measures page.
