Tenant Satisfaction Measures

The Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) are made up of 22 performance indicators.

All social housing providers are required to report on these measures by the Regulator of Social Housing.

The measures

The measures are split into two parts:

• 10 performance measures based on management performance information
• 12 tenant perception survey measures
  
  

These measures are broken down into the following five themes:

• Keeping homes in good repair
• Maintaining building safety
• Respectful and helpful engagement
• Effective handling of complaints
• Responsible neighbourhood management

The 12 tenant perception survey measures are collected from both our rental and homeownership customers.

In the reports, these are called low-cost rental accommodation (LCRA) and low-cost home ownership (LCHO).

Our approach

We choose a census approach to collect the tenant perception measures. That means we collect responses from all our customers and not just a smaller group to represent them. This ensures we capture the feedback from all customers to provide complete and accurate insight without relying on statistical generalisations. Generalisations work best when the smaller group represents the larger group really well but at Bromford we don’t think that is reflective of our customers. We believe that each customer is unique and different, and therefore each customer should have a voice that is heard – that is why we collect responses from all our customers.

We do this by including the regulated tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs) as part of our annual customer conversations. Our face-to-face approach is only used by a small percentage of other housing associations and the majority use a telephone collection method. We have chosen our approach for a number of reasons:

• We have a well-established neighbourhood coaching model where it is a requirement that every customer has at least an annual conversation with their Neighbourhood Coach. We want to strengthen our conversations with customers and by incorporating the measures we’re able to have even more meaningful engagement.
• For us, it isn’t enough to know how satisfied or dissatisfied a customer is, we want to understand why a customer thinks that. In our view the best way to do that is by a face-to-face conversation, not a paper or online survey and not over the phone. Importantly our involved customers think that too.
• The insight we receive through the collection of TSMs and annual conversations is one of the foundations underpinning our broader customer engagement approach to ensure we listen to and act on feedback where it matters most. Our strong belief, which is also supported by our involved customer group and Board, is that every customer’s voice matters, and their views and opinions should be heard and acted upon.
• Using our existing teams means we are not incurring additional costs by using additional resource or external providers to collect the information- keeping costs down and delivering value for money.
• We’re able to address barriers to participation and deliver a fully inclusive approach with a good representation of responses.
   
  We do recognise that by using a face-to-face method the results could be considered to not be as objective. This is because when you conduct face to face surveys (in comparison to online or postal surveys) it is possible that customers give a more favourable answer because they know the person conducting the survey. Our DNA however encourages neighbourhood coaches to have honest and transparent conversations with customers and we believe our feedback reflects this. Importantly, it also allows us to gather the reasons why a customer thinks that way and means we can act on that feedback straight away. 
   
  For the reasons listed we believe the method we use is the right one for customers, and the right one to help us deliver our strategy. Importantly this approach has been signed off by our involved customer group and Board.