NFA members – all local authority-owned – have higher overall satisfaction scores. On average, this is three percentage points higher than housing associations and six percentage points higher than councils with direct control over the management of their homes.

Since April 2024, all social landlords have been required by the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) to submit and publicise their survey results for the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) which assess landlord performance on metrics such as the quality of homes, repairs services and complaints response.

The NFA represents the specialist housing management organisations – ALMOs – set up by England’s local authorities to manage council-owned homes.

Independent housing insight specialists Housemark were commissioned by the NFA to review its members’ performance in the context of the wider council housing sector. Their analysis showed that:

• at the median point, specialist ALMO housing service delivery and TSM ratings outperformed direct local authority delivery on all metrics analysed.
• their ‘landlord satisfaction’ score is 11 percentage points higher than the median for direct delivery by in-house local authority teams.
• delivery by these specialist council-owned housing organisations is also better value for money, with an average overall cost per property of £2537 – £81 lower than the direct local authority management average.

The Housemark analysis draws on TSM data from 18 NFA members and 62 local authorities to compare direct council management with that of council-owned housing specialist organisations.

Housemark was also asked to compare front-line resourcing, delivery costs and performance outcomes using data from the 2022/23 Housemark benchmarking submission, This analysis found ALMOs outperform local authorities across all housing management metrics analysed in this study. 

“It’s no accident that when we look at the best-performing ALMOs, we see they are the ones working closely with their parent local authorities who consistently monitor performance against the management agreement they put in place,” said NFA Managing Director Eamon McGoldrick. 

“I think the results show conclusively that with the right ALMO-council relationship in place, the ALMO model delivers outstanding council housing services. It demonstrates that the principle of handing day to day housing services to a team of specialists who do housing, and nothing but housing, is a sound one. And there is no loss of democratic control.”