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We use comparison websites to make sure we get the best deal for everything from car insurance to holidays and now a new website means social housing tenants can scrutinise their landlords in the same way. Isabel Hardman reports
Erica Andrews has often wondered if the grass is greener on the other side of her fence.
The leaseholder, who lives in a property managed by Saxon Weald in Southampton, likes her home but admits she is curious about whether tenants of other landlords are even happier.
Until late last year Ms Andrews would never have been able to find out. But now she can see precisely how Saxon Weald compares to other providers in her area - thanks to the the Tenant Services Authority landlord comparison service, launched at the end of 2009 and complete with distinctive pink branding.
For Ms Andrews, and her landlordSaxon Weald, the website brought good news. After pulling up the results for all providers in her area, she discovers Saxon Weald has come out top for tenant satisfaction.
‘If anything, I feel comforted to see the scores because otherwise you never know whether what you are getting is as good as other people. I thought we had a good deal, but when you see figures like that, it goes home that yes, we are doing quite well.’
But how realistic is the picture that Ms Andrews and other tenants and leaseholders get from the website? And how many of them are using the service anyway?
Facts at your fingertips
The website is certainly simple to use (portal.tenantservicesauthority.org). Anyone can type in their postcode, town or local authority area, and access a list of all the providers within that area. They can compare rent levels and feedback from tenants on how satisfied they are, their landlord’s performance on repairs and on taking their views into account.
‘We have made it very clear that we want a co-regulatory framework with decisions on service delivery taking place between tenants and landlords in the first instance,’ says Richard Moriarty, executive director for market development at the TSA.
‘We have only put onto the portal the information that was already in the public domain, but not readily accessible.’
The site launched on 1 December 2009, and received 3,000 unique visitors in its first month. On average, readers spent between two to five minutes viewing information, and clicked on 10 pages. So far, so good. But is all that information useful to tenants?
Janice Kay, a Great Places tenant who lives in Manchester, is very impressed not just with the site but with her landlord’s record. ‘It’s really funky, crisp, and clear,’ she says. ‘I found it really easy to use. My only problem would be that you can’t see how old the data is.
‘But I think that if someone goes on there and sees their landlord is doing really badly on repairs, it opens up a portal with the landlord for them to ask why they aren’t performing as well as the other landlords in the area.’
A national view
Asking this question is not, however, as simple as it first appears. The TSA has only collated tenant satisfaction scores nationally, so the results for a landlord are the same if they have properties in Southampton and Manchester.
This could be a problem for tenants whose landlord only owns a smattering of homes in their area, and whose energies are focused on a city many miles away. They have no way of comparing how their landlord is actually performing in their area.
A spokesperson for Sanctuary Group says: ‘With the TSA’s facility to search by location, tenants are likely to believe they are viewing local performance data for their landlord, however this is not the case.
‘We are obliged to select a random sample of residents from the thousands of homes we manage across the country. Consequently we feel the data cannot be said to be locally relevant.’
Not all landlords are happy with the way the site presents the information, either. Housing associations must submit this data every three years, and for some whose satisfaction scores hark back to an era of poor relationships with tenants and delays in making repairs, the age of the data on the site brings back bad memories.
False impressions
Equity Housing Group fell into the bottom five for overall tenant satisfaction in Manchester. But a spokesperson for the group said: ‘The information referred to on the TSA Landlord Portal comes from our status survey from 2008, and we have made substantial changes and improvements since it was carried out. The data shown is not a current reflection of our services: more recent internal surveys of our repairs and management services show significantly higher levels of customer satisfaction.’
One of the subsidiaries of Great Places Housing Group, Ashiana Housing Association, came last on the same list. Great Places was unhappy that data submitted in March 2009 has been used for this list, as the group has since changed. After Great Places complained to the TSA that this old data could confuse tenants, data for Ashiana was removed.
But Mr Moriarty says there is no reason why landlords cannot submit data as regularly as they want. And any problems with the system will not necessarily remain: ‘We have said that we will take another look at the site in April, and we’re certainly open to suggestions about how it can change.’
Until then, tenants can at least make basic comparisons between the service they get compared to their neighbours. And if landlords are really providing an excellent service to all of their tenants then they will have nothing to worry about, wherever they happen to operate.
Southampton
Top 5 tenant satisfaction
92 per cent
1. Saxon Weald Homes
90.6 per cent
2. Downland Housing Association
87 per cent
3. Testway Housing Association
87 per cent
4. English Churches Housing Group
86 per cent
5. Atlantic Housing Group
Manchester
Top 5 tenant satisfaction
92.5 per cent
1. Places for People Individual Support
91.7 per cent
2. Johnnie’ Johnson Housing Trust
90per cent
3. Eastlands Homes Partnership
87per cent
4. English Churches Housing Group
86per cent
5. Willow Park Housing Trust
Southampton
Bottom 5 tenant satisfaction
69.1 per cent
1. A2 Dominion London
71 per cent
2. James Butcher HA
73 per cent
3.Livability Housing
75.5 per cent
4.Places for People Homes Ltd
76 per cent
5. Hyde Housing Association
Manchester
Bottom 5 tenant satisfaction
61.3per cent
1. Ashiana Housing Association
68per cent
2. Sanctuary Housing Association
72.5per cent
3. The Guinness Trust
73per cent
4. Equity Housing Group
73per cent
5. Livability Housing
Have your say
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Readers' comments (10)
aburke | 19/01/2010 9:34 am
Is it just me or does this make no sense whatsoever. Let me propose a scenario.
You are unhappy (or *happy*) with the service that you receive. You pop onto the compare website and find that satisfaction is running at 75% at your own HA. Then you find that in the HA next to you satisfaction in running at 80%. If you are happy. What do you care? If you are unhappy, has it made you happier knowing that another reports a higher satisfaction? It is the same problem with insurance comparison websites. On the face of it, it looks cheaper and you can appear satisfied.
But does it pay out easily and when you need it to?
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Jim | 19/01/2010 1:57 pm
I dont believe for a minute that tenants want to compare landlords. They want cheap rent, excellent services and there repairs done quickly and right first time. Get a grip.
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kass | 19/01/2010 2:33 pm
I would question those satisfaction figures in a big way, for a start. Each time an independent researcher carries out they same researches the independent'srate of satisfaction is very much lower.
Surely social landlords should not be allowed to produce their own satisfaction figures to tell tenants how well they are doing. It is like asking the Conservative party to conduct its own poll to tell the public how much ahead they are of Labour... But wait a minute, let Labour carry out the same and the result will not be very much in favour of conservatives.
Objective residents satisfaction should be all carried out soley by a completely independent body which includes a strong residents presence.
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teddy mcnabb | 23/01/2010 7:18 pm
kass if anyone trusts a social landlord they are still on baby milk.
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Carol Matthews | 26/01/2010 2:48 pm
As a means of increasing tenant choice and landlord accountability, the TSA’s new comparison website should be welcomed.
However, as Isabel Hardman’s article correctly observed, the data used for some RSLs is older than that of others and this can create a misleading picture, particularly at a local level where significant change has taken place, such as the transfer of management responsibilities.
The information for Guinness Trust in Manchester is a good example of this, being based on RSR results at March 2009, which themselves were based on the Trust’s 2007 STATUS Survey.
To further complicate matters, Guinness Trust’s properties in Manchester have been managed by Guinness Northern Counties since 2008, so even an up-to-date figure for Guinness Trust would not be relevant here.
However, to their credit, the TSA have been very helpful since we contacted them about this and are looking at amending the site to reflect the increase in customer satisfaction to the 80% figure achieved in Guinness Northern Counties' 2009 STATUS Survey.
We would urge other landlords in a similar position to follow the advice of the TSA’s Richard Moriarty by regularly updating their information, so that the website can be of maximum benefit to both RSLs and their customers.
However the site’s biggest challenge now is to ensure that a local search produces a genuinely local result, thus supporting the TSA’s commitment to local standards.
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You are having a laugh | 26/01/2010 10:06 pm
Carol Matthews | Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:48 GMT
***As a means of increasing tenant choice and landlord accountability, the TSA’s new comparison website should be welcomed***
The website should be welcomed if it improves the quality of services to residents. The website will not achieve this outcome. The STATUS survey is a highly flawed method for assessing residents satisfaction with services (although it does make a pretty penny for the companies that do the surveying).
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Joe Halewood | 27/01/2010 5:33 pm
The usual comments about stats (lies, damn lies etc, and their misuse) ned not be stated.
Yet in doing a quick spot of research on another issue last week I founf a TSA report from last year on one large RSL (often maligned here) that had a tenant satisfaction rate of 86% for new build properties, but only a 56% one for older properties. So even within overall satisfaction ratings there are huge differences for the same landlord.
The figures above simply mean nothing.
Then we have innumerable different ways on how 'satisfaction' is measured..... oh why bother!
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alex | 06/05/2010 10:39 am
coming late in to the debate here, but interesting comments from everyone above.
Firstly, it is important to note that the status surveys are actually more about perception of an organisation than actual satisfaction in that it's asking tenants to think about a number of factors as part of the satisfaction levels.
Also, in knowing that a neighbouring HA has a higher level of satisfaction doesn't necessarily mean that a tenant would be happier by moving to that area. for each one of us, what motivates us and makes us "happy" with the service delivered, can vary so much, that a stat through a survey with some flaws in its methodology is risky!
What would be more meaningful would be a way of measuring what tenants think with all services, across all access channels - then you will know how satisfied tenants REALLY are with the provider overall.
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alex | 06/05/2010 10:39 am
coming late in to the debate here, but interesting comments from everyone above.
Firstly, it is important to note that the status surveys are actually more about perception of an organisation than actual satisfaction in that it's asking tenants to think about a number of factors as part of the satisfaction levels.
Also, in knowing that a neighbouring HA has a higher level of satisfaction doesn't necessarily mean that a tenant would be happier by moving to that area. for each one of us, what motivates us and makes us "happy" with the service delivered, can vary so much, that a stat through a survey with some flaws in its methodology is risky!
What would be more meaningful would be a way of measuring what tenants think with all services, across all access channels - then you will know how satisfied tenants REALLY are with the provider overall.
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You are having a laugh | 06/05/2010 2:59 pm
Yes STATUS is about perception but that is as useful as a chocolate tea pot.
How are you going to improve your services based upon what people think who have never used the service?
It makes it meaningless.
The number of factors that can impact on the ill-informed opinion are multiple.
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