Your views on the Tenant Satisfaction Measures

As part of the roll out of the Social Housing White Paper, social housing landlords will have to measure and report on 22 new Tenant Satisfaction Measures being introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing. These measures will be a key way for landlords to be held to account by the Regulator and most importantly, our customers. They’ll be introduced from April 2023.

The Tenant Satisfaction Measures focus on  

• Keeping properties in good repair 
• Maintaining building safety 
• Effective handling of complaints 
• Respectful and helpful engagement 
• Responsible neighbourhood management, including measures on anti-social behaviour. 

Why did Stonewater ask for customer views?

The Regulator wanted to get landlord and customers’ views about the TSMs so they launched a public consultation in December. We wanted to respond jointly with our customers so we invited you to join one of our workshops to tell us what you think.

What did you tell us?

Six customers joined us at two workshops in February. They provided us with some brilliant feedback. We’ve reflected it in our response to the Regulator, but it’s also helped us to understand improvements we can start to make to services now as well as how you’d like us to use the TSMs when they’re introduced.

• Every customer agreed that the Regulator has identified the right issues in the draft TSMs. You want us to build trust by embracing respect and treating customers with dignity.
• Communication is key. You told us to communicate in a “plain English and a human” way. You encouraged us to be honest, transparent and open when things go wrong and make sure we explain how we’ll make things right.
• Stonewater needs to make sure every customer can take part in the TSM survey. We need to be inclusive and put support in place where it’s needed.
• We need to make sure customers know how taking part in surveys, workshops and other involvement opportunities helped us to improve services. Customers need to know that taking part made a difference!
• Our customer engagement and communication needs to be accessible and inclusive, and you told us to be creative if we want to catch your attention!
• Stonewater should publish an improvement plan alongside our TSMs so customers know how we’ll use their feedback to make improvements.
• We need to dig into the detail of the TSM findings and make sure we can identify where performance is uneven across different parts of the country.
• Our customers are worried about stigma and that some communities are struggling for reasons that reflect issues beyond Stonewater’s control, like the local economy or access to public services. Customers asked us to do everything we can to promote our support and services to help anyone struggling.
• Customers know that they’ll be paying for this work through their rent and they want the Regulator and Stonewater to deliver value by really driving improvements.

What will we do differently because of your feedback?

You helped us to respond both to the Regulator’s consultation and to think through how we’ll roll out the TSMs to our customers and most importantly, how we’ll use customers’ feedback to the TSM survey to improve our services. We need to make some big changes, which will take time. But we’re committed to doing it and we’ll keep you updated on these, including:

• We’ll survey customers over the telephone so everyone has the chance to input into the TSMs and we’ll work with customers in Supported Housing and Retirement Living to make sure they can take part.
• We’ll publish our TSMs with an improvement plan, which shows to customers how we’ll use their feedback to improve services. We’ll breakdown our results by geography so we can pinpoint the areas we need to prioritise.
• We’ll make sure our communication reflects your feedback. We’ll be honest, transparent and human. We’ll explain more about how we manage our contracts, what happens when someone makes a complaint or raises an issue on social media.
• We’re also going to update our holding messages at our call centre so they’re more relevant and share more information about how we ensure the safety of our homes.
• We’ll make sure we feedback on every single piece of engagement we do and make sure you know about the difference taking part made.
• We will make sure all our customer contact preferences are up to date and make sure our systems work better so every customer receives the right information in the right format in a timely way.