Issue - meetings

This report presents the outcomes of the annual 2015/16 Tenant Satisfaction Survey which is the biggest single gauge of satisfaction across landlord services by leaseholders and tenants of council owned housing stock.

Resolved:

(i)           That the results of the 2015/16 Tenant Satisfaction Survey be considered and the officer comments regarding future actions be noted.

(ii)          That a Tenant Satisfaction Survey for 2016/17 be run.

Reason:   To ensure that the Council has up to date information regarding customer satisfaction, enabling landlord and building services to target resources and improvements to those services prioritised by customers.

The Executive Member considered a report that highlighted the outcomes of the annual 2015/16 Tenant Satisfaction Survey.

Officers gave an update and confirmed that the survey had taken place between October and December 2015 and was primarily carried out by post but contact by email and text was also used. The survey contained several new questions to ensure the results were compatible to feed into Housemark benchmarking and the results showed that 11% of tenants answered the survey.

In answer to the Executive Members questions officers confirmed that visitor numbers to West Offices and email contact to officers had increased but phone calls received had declined.

Officers discussed the analysis and stated that the results were statistically significant to within +/-2.48%. The Executive Member noted that:

·        the vast majority of areas within the Your Property theme had increased with a notable increase within the overall quality of the home, overall repairs, maintenance service and with gas servicing arrangements. 

·        tenant’s satisfaction with neighbourhood and estate services had mainly increased, however, satisfaction with the neighbourhood as a place to live had decreased.

·        tenants cited dog fouling as the highest problem followed by car parking, condition of the roads/pavements and rubbish or litter issues.

·        satisfaction with the service delivery had mixed results and included decreases in the ability of staff to deal with a query at first point of contact, ability of staff to deal with a query efficiently and effectively and the ease of making a complaint.

In response to the results officers confirmed:

·        they would be considering frontline services to effectively deliver a more proactive approach with customers.

·        Building Services would continue to improve their service, including implementing a text messaging notification service for residents.

·        amendments to the tenancy agreement made it a requirement that tenants requested permission to keep a pet and tenants would also be issued with a best practice guidance on keeping a pet

The Executive Member thanked officers and welcomed even more positive results in the 2016/17 survey.

Resolved:

(i)           That the results of the 2015/16 Tenant Satisfaction Survey be considered and the officer comments regarding future actions be noted.

(ii)          That a Tenant Satisfaction Survey for 2016/17 be run.

Reason:   To ensure that the Council has up to date information regarding customer satisfaction, enabling landlord and building services to target resources and improvements to those services prioritised by customers.