BMG Research was commissioned by the Regulator of Social Housing to conduct the National Tenant Survey (NTS)
Capturing feedback amongst Low Cost Rental Accommodation (LCRA) tenants and shared owners (Low cost Home Ownership tenants) the NTS provides the regulator with a robust and independent understanding of tenant satisfaction across the sector and offers a powerful tool to dig deeper into the Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) perception questions and understand what is driving tenant satisfaction.
Key findings from the NTS include:
- Seven in ten (70%) LCRA tenants surveyed are satisfied with the service provided by their landlord.
- Experiences of the responsive repairs service and views on home maintenance are the most important drivers to satisfaction for LCRA tenants.
- Shared owners indicate significantly lower levels of satisfaction than LCRA tenants, half are satisfied with the service provided by their landlord (49%).
- Rent or service charges, repairs issues, and general customer service are reasons citied by shared owners for dissatisfaction with their landlord.
- Complaints handling has the lowest level of satisfaction amongst all the TSM perception questions. However further analysis suggests that around a fifth of these of these complaints can be clearly classed as complaints under the Complaint Handling Code that applies to landlords, while the remainder are either ambiguous or might be classed as service requests.
- The statistical analysis carried out on the NTS results also suggest that tenants’ experiences with the services provided by their landlord has a stronger influence on their overall satisfaction than the stock and demographic characteristics of a tenant.
Jack Harper, Research Director, comments: “The NTS has provided us with important insight into tenant experiences and highlights where landlords can improve their services.
While many of the findings replicate what we see through our work with individual landlords, this research has allowed us to evidence nationally, for the first time, the extent at which perceptions of home maintenance and the responsive repairs service drive tenant satisfaction.
It has also allowed us to uncover which stock and tenant characteristics have a material impact on satisfaction. Although the finding that age has the strongest influence on tenant satisfaction will not be a surprise to many in the sector, it’s interesting to see that there are only a small number of other characteristics that influence tenant satisfaction. However, the finding that tenants’ experiences of services covered across the TSM themes have a far greater impact on overall satisfaction than tenant characteristics should be encouraging for landlords and provide them with insight into areas that may require service improvement. Our evidence suggests that if they deliver a positive tenant experience getting these core services right, then tenants should be satisfied overall.”
The NTS findings are published alongside the regulator’s analysis of the 2023/24 TSM results here.
The narrative report detailing the full NTS results can be found here.
The technical report with full details of the NTS methodology can be found here.
If you’d like to understand how we can support you please get in touch with Jack Harper and Danielle Barnett who lead our housing research.
View the results