Agenda item

Report from the Strategic Director of Adult Care, Housing and Public Health.

Recommendations:

That Cabinet:

1.    Notes the contents of the report.

2.    Agrees to receive a further update in six months’ time.

Consideration was given to the report which provided the latest six-monthly update to Cabinet on Tenant Satisfaction measures (TSMs) and regulatory compliance. Following the passing of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act in July 2023, the Regulator for Social Housing consulted on revised consumer standards for social housing landlords. The new consumer standards came into force on 1 April 2024. The Regulator of Social Housing (the Regulator) would gather evidence and assess providers’ ability to deliver a housing service which met the standards through inspections at least every four years and through desktop reviews of performance data such as Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs), a mixture of performance measures and tenant perception survey results. This proactive regime replaced the largely reactive regulatory framework that was in place prior to 1 April 2024.

The Council submitted its first year of TSM data covering the 2023-24 financial year in June 2024. Surveys for the 2024-25 financial year began in the summer and mid-year results were now available. The Regulator of Social Housing had also published the first national dataset of TSM results. This data was summarised in the report and contained in full at Appendix 1.

Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) were a series of 22 performance measures, which had to be collected by all social housing landlords with more than 1,000 properties. Data for ten of the performance measures was submitted directly by the Council. Data for the other 12 performance measures was captured through a Tenant Perception Survey. The performance measures, including the survey questions, were prescribed by the Regulator and could not be deviated from.

In 2023-24, the Council reported that 76.9% of tenants were satisfied overall with the service. The equivalent national figure for all social landlords was 70%. The Council’s position as at 22 November 2024 showed a 1.5% increase in overall satisfaction, at 78.4%.

The November 2024 results showed an improvement across all property related satisfaction measures. Satisfaction that homes were well-maintained now stood at 78.4%, and satisfaction that homes were safe stood at 81.5%. The most marked improvement between the two sets of results was in relation to repairs: satisfaction with the overall repairs service rose from 74.1% to 79%, and satisfaction with the time taken to complete the most recent repair increased from 72.1% to 77.4%. The percentage of tenants who felt generally well-informed had increased, from 74% to 76.6%, while those who felt they were treated with fairness and respect had dropped very slightly from 83.6% to 83%, albeit both measures remained higher than peer benchmarked averages.

In 2023-24, satisfaction with the way the Council dealt with anti-social behaviour, at 64.9%, was lower than many of the other scores, albeit it was above the median score for other housing providers (58%). In the mid-year results for 2024-25, satisfaction levels in Rotherham dropped slightly to 62.3%. Another notable change between the 2023-24 results and the November 2024-25 results was in relation to satisfaction with the cleanliness and maintenance of communal areas, which dropped from 71.6% to 68.8%. These scores remained higher than the median for other housing providers based on data available.

Resolved:

That Cabinet:

1.    Note the contents of the report.

2.    Agree to receive a further update in six months’ time.