Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 – Time for action

The landmark Social Housing Act has now received Royal Assent and has become law.

Social housing providers are now required to publish the results of their Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs).The data is not just for the Regulator for Social Housing; the tenants  will also see how well their housing provider is performs.

The measures revolve around four consumer standards; quality of homes, tenancies, neighbourhood and community, and tenant engagement and involvement. In January 2023, Inside Housing reported on the latest Housemark research that showed overall satisfaction levels are falling.  The need to accurately measure – and address weaknesses – must be a priority for every landlord.

Of the 22 measures, just over half (12) focus on tenants’ opinions.  The specific questions that need to be asked have already been prescribed. However, landlords need to think about  how to efficiently collect this data – including seeking feedback from the harder to reach groups, such as the digitally excluded.

There are several options for data collection, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Face-to-face interviewing will be the most expensive approach; it is labour intensive and also in part because many tenants may not be around when called on. Telephone interviews are less costly, but this still suffers from not knowing when  the best time is to call to encourage participation.  It also makes it less easy to ask questions that involve a rating scale, which some tenants may find hard to visualise.  Postal self-completion questionnaires tend to suffer from not just being slow, but also typically achieve the lowest levels of response.  Digital, whether by email or some other electronic means, has the advantage of the tenant being able to complete in their own time, but is easier to ignore and some tenants, especially older people, may be digitally excluded.

To respond to these challenges, Alertacall has upgraded its touchscreen and now it includes a tenant survey app.  This allows landlords to easily seek tenants views, not just for TSMs, but for any subject where tenant feedback is desirable.  Tenants can access the survey at a time of their choosing and once complete, the form is automatically returned and collated.  The overall responses are available in digital form for landlords to analyse.

The messaging app, that is already extensively used by providers who have the touchscreen, can also be used to ‘nudge’ tenants into responding to boost the response rate.

What’s great about this solution is that it can be introduced quickly and easily, and with funding available for this service, it provides a solution for collecting TSMs at minimal cost.  At the same time, it solves the issue of digital exclusion.

Several of the Alertacall touchscreen’s other features mean that it does not just enable data collection, but can also improve the scores of many of the TSM measures themselves, including:

• A repairs reporting app to enable issues to be reported 24 hours a day
• An ASB reporting app to notify the landlord of issues in their neighbourhood
• EIGHT different ways of communicating between tenant and landlord, including video calling, which will result in greater feelings of engagement and involvement

If you would like to know more about our solution for collecting TSMs, please contact us at contact@alertacall.com or call 0808 208 1234