With just a month to go before public consultation on the draft Tenant Satisfaction Measures closes, three members of the NFA’s Tenant Advisory Panel comment on this post-Grenfell reform that promises social housing residents both a voice and a means of finding out whether landlords are doing their job properly.
All three are actively involved in the governance of their landlords’ work as board members and scrutineers – and they strongly encourage other tenants to share their reactions to these proposed measures with the Regulator for Social Housing before the deadline on 3 March 2022.
Links to the suggested measures and details of how to respond online, by email or by post are at the end of this article.

Lorraine Gill, Board Member, Stockport Homes

I think the draft TSMs all seem fair. Certainly it’s been great to hear that so much consultation has gone on over the past year. This, I think, is important and will challenge landlords to review their internal processes and look at their policies from a customer perspective, and put that customer at the heart of what they’re doing.

Even though we recognize that some organizations are already measuring some of these aspects of their services, it will matter that they are able to evidence what they do and that a consistent standardized approach is in place through the TSMs for all landlords to work with.

Data and numbers are really important, and it’s great to see the sector more data-driven so, as board members, we can all use hard evidence to make the right decisions.

However, I worry about the risk of losing the important qualitative feedback from customers and tenants. While I know the TSMs are all about the data and the numbers, we need to make sure we’re not going to lose those real nuggets that come through face-to-face contact or direct dialogue with residents. We need to use the two kinds of information together to improve services. That will also build up trust between landlords and their customers.

Fairness and respectfulness between staff and residents … I think that comes down to the right culture being ingrained in all staff.

That’s where good staff engagement becomes more likely to deliver in terms of feedback. Where staff are really communicating consistently, that’s when tenants can start to connect the dots and begin to feel it’s worth offering information – when they can see the connection between what they tell staff and the results that come from that.

I agree that measuring a landlord’s positive contribution to the neighbourhood is difficult, but I also believe landlords have some social responsibility, and often they are in a really great place within communities to positively influence and maximize residents’ potential, and encourage partnership working. I want to see that encouraged in some way through the TSMs. It would be a shame to lose it because, ultimately, funding is getting lost in all those areas.

We know that often our landlords and their staff are trying to be social workers too. This does put a lot of pressure on them. Our housing providers and workers are almost the last line of defence in some ways.

I want to stress that I feel the TSMs do help emphasise how important it is for landlords and their boards to make sure their processes and systems are robust, so that the people inputting data are trained to do that consistently and in a way that makes the results useful and comparable. The same level of understanding will be needed to make sure we interpret those results well and use it correctly in decision-making.

The only other thing I want to add is the element around fairness and respectfulness between staff and residents, and I think that just comes down to culture and that being ingrained in staff at all levels. And that’s really hard to evidence in a tangible way. But perhaps what you can do is demonstrate that the right culture is there when you’re delivering on your goals and your values. Hopefully, when that comes through, landlords will see satisfaction measures moving in the right direction.

Tris Francis, Scrutiny Panel Chair, South Tyneside Homes

The proposed satisfaction measurements seem to be robust and cover most of the issues. But I do think some of the wording of the TSMs is a bit strange – speaking as a tenant, that is. Where the meaning isn’t clear enough, or where it’s the kind of language that housing workers would instantly understand but isn’t generally used by the rest of us, I worry that some of the measures might set up expectations where some tenants hope for more from them than they can actually have.

For instance, the measure that asks how landlords have improved their communities – will residents expect things like putting a new park in? Unrealistic improvements that no landlord could reasonably deliver? When we’re asked if we’re satisfied that our homes are well-maintained and safe to live in – to me, if a home is well-maintained it should already be safe to live in, so why the two questions in one? There needs to be some really clear thinking about how these questions are put so that tenants can answer them easily and honestly, without confusion.

For the same reason, I don’t see the need for any more measures than this [the 22 draft measures]. I think if you do too many more, you’re just going to wash them out and weaken them. Tenants will lose the will to answer them.

Making sure the language works for tenants is really important.

Our landlord asks tenants to write the organisation’s annual report. I think if the TSMs are done correctly and the data is collected properly, the information they provide will be a tremendous help, and not just for the annual report; I think they’ll also be used by scrutiny panels and for benchmarking against other landlords. That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it? – there’s got to be a certain way of doing it so there’s no variance, and it’s true and it’s comparable.

When I was first asked to look at these draft TSMs, I had been working on another report. I started reading these and I was so confused – I still am. It’s partly because I get data from a number of different places in my role as a scrutiny panel member, and none of that data is consistent. Here it was so hard to understand the way it was set it out. If they are supposed to be targeting tenants, why don’t they take that into account? It’s a bit easier for us because we’re involved, but can you imagine if you were just looking at this for the first time?

Making sure the language works for tenants is really important. With our annual report, we try and change it from the way the company talks, which is to me very corporate, to the way that tenants speak and think. We try to write our annual report in ‘tenant talk’. The language is the most important thing you’ve got to get right. Regional differences, like the language that we use here in the Northeast, isn’t the same as corporate language.

Lou Knight, Vice-Chair, Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Panel, Poole Housing

We all accept, I think, that these proposals will get moved about a bit as time goes on. Things will be added and things tweaked. That’s natural.

I agree very much with Tris on the question of language – and it’s not just the question of regional language but also the language of officer-speak to layman-speak. An officer, because of their background and their mindset, uses a particular flow of language, but a lay person like me will read and read and read – and think, what the heck are we talking about here? If these measures are to be useful to tenants, they have to be written in everyday language.

I also agree that there has to be more detailed definition of what some of the measures are talking about. What does a positive contribution to the neighbourhood mean? Does it include things like cleaning off graffiti on railway bridges? And when we’re being asked whether our homes are easy to keep warm, do we also get to say whether they’re easy to keep cool in the summer? It’s not just about being cold, it’s a whole minefield of concerns around zero-carbon efforts and climate change.

The TSMs will give tenants the chance to ask tough questions if they don’t think their landlord’s answers are good enough.

As a tenant panel member, thinking about what we do with the information in the TSMs when the first results are finally published in 2024, I feel sure we will find this information very useful. And if the results aren’t as they should be, panels like mine will probably be asking embarrassing questions.

We are already doing this kind of work and our panel has just completed a major scrutiny on the refurbishment of four tower blocks. By chance we picked up that there were problems on the site and we spent 48 hours going through different reports and interviewing people.

So, my message to other tenants – on boards, on scrutiny panels, or if they are just regular residents – is to say that these TSMs will give you the chance to ask tough questions if you don’t think your landlord’s answers are good enough.

How to contribute to the consultation

The TSMs will apply to all social housing landlords, including local authorities, housing associations and other registered social housing providers. The Regulator wants opinions on whether the suggested measures (read them HERE) are relevant, accurate, responsive, do-able and will achieve these three goals:

• make a meaningful difference to tenants
• be possible for landlords to carry out
• set goals that the Regulator can check

The consultation closes at 6:30pm on 3 March 2022. Anyone with an interest in social housing can contribute to the discussion. Add your thoughts online HERE; or email consultation@rsh.gov.uk, writing “Tenant Satisfaction Measures” in the subject line; or write to:

Tenant Satisfaction Measures
The Regulator of Social Housing
Referrals and Regulatory Enquiries team
Level 2
7–8 Wellington Place
Leeds LS1 4AP