ALL of us active within the world of social housing are more than aware the Social Housing (Regulation) Act received royal assent on 20 July 2023 and is now law.

While many of its provisions still need to be translated into regulation, this should happen sometime this year.

A vital part of the new regulations are the Tenant Satisfaction Measures – the TSMs – and they are the new benchmark for where an organisation stands on its customer satisfaction, replacing or superseding other assessment methods, including the STAR survey.

The NFA have recently published The ALMO model: first results from the Tenant Satisfaction Measures; this is a really interesting document as it lays out the average results for all ALMOs. At Cornwall Housing, the tenants’ forum that I work with will be comparing our actual results with the average for the sector.

At this year’s NFA conference, I will be trying to answer a few key questions about how Cornwall’s tenant forum is using these new sources of data to improve tenant empowerment and help our landlord improve performance.

How have Cornwall Housing Ltd. Tenant Forum (CHLTF) members prepared for the new Regulations?

In many ways the CHLTF began to prepare for big changes in the sector immediately after consultation for the 2018 Green Paper, A new deal for social housing, began.

After the terrible loss of life at Kensington’s Grenfell Tower in 2017, a new attitude toward social housing seemed to prevail and the Green Paper confirmed this. CHTLF undertook and submitted the consultation in full.  The following White Paper and Social Housing (Regulation) Act framed our understanding of how the new regulations would shape the social housing sector.

How have CHLTF used data from the Tenant Satisfaction Measures to scrutinise the performance of CHL?

Cornwall Housing elected to gather TSM data quarterly and share this information with the forum.  CHL management have stated: “In the interest of openness and transparency, CHL want to share this information with the Tenants Forum and provide an opportunity for oversight and discussion on a quarterly basis.”

The TSMs are a standing agenda item at the quarterly forum committee meetings where we have the opportunity to scrutinise the collected data, question senior officers, and make comments and recommendations. An early draft of the TSM report for the year has just been shared with the forum which will give us a discussion point for our next meeting.

A preliminary reading suggests the TSMs are being used as they should be; they are designed to be tools which enable us to focus on what needs to be improved and to highlight where we may be going right or wrong.

How have CHLTF been involved in scrutinising, monitoring and holding their landlord to account?

Cornwall Housing Ltd has supported the Tenant Forum since its inception in 2012.

In the lead-up to the Social Housing Regulation Bill becoming law in July 2023 and the imminent introduction of the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, the forum undertook an internal review. It changed its terms of reference, switching its emphasis towards a much more proactive approach and our terms of reference now say:

The Purpose and Fundamental Objectives of the CHL Tenants Forum is to: Act in the interests of all CHL Tenants to Monitor, Investigate and Challenge all aspects of Cornwall Housing Ltd. It will also if necessary, hold the company to account.

With this renewed mandate and with the agreement and co-operation of CHL, Forum ook on the new task of reviewing complaints. Twice a year the forum now receives around 10 per cent of step 1 complaints and a smaller percentage of step 2 complaints. These are chosen at random and anonymised. Forum then reads through each case – not to adjudicate or comment on decisions made, but to make sure the complaints policy and all procedures have been followed. Our first review exercise was very successful.

What is my role with CHL and the Forum to make sure the tenant voice is heard and influences service delivery?

I write a quarterly report which is sent to the forum, the CHL Board, the Cornwall Council housing portfolio holder and the senior management team. It is also available to any CHL resident on request.

In this report I set out all that the forum has done over the past three months and include updates on service delivery, complaints and the quarterly TSM data. The quarterly report also includes forum comments, conclusions and any recommendations we feel should be made. I deliver this report in person to the CHL Board.

How has the tenant forum contributed to CHL’s readiness for regulation?

Although it’s still early days, the new regulations do seem to be having an impact. CHL are, by and large using the TSMs, key performance indicators and the Housing Ombudsman’s complaints code as the tools for improvement they were designed to be. The openness of CHL, particularly around the access it is offering the forum to the TSM data and the new approach to an ongoing complaints review undertaken by the Forum is showing a real progressive attitude emerging within CHL.