How are landlords interacting with tenants when it comes to repairs?

Sponsored by Aico

How are social landlords interacting with tenants when it comes to repairs and maintenance? An Inside Housing survey, in association with home life safety specialist Aico, looks for the answers

Picture: Alamy

Sharelines

The Housing Ombudsman has found a 53% increase in complaints from residents, driven by poor communication. An @insidehousing survey, sponsored by @Aico_Limited, looks for the answers #UKhousing (sponsored)

“With more than 40% of landlords finding it difficult to engage with some residents, it’s clear the sector has a long journey ahead to ensure all residents’ voices are heard and acted upon,” says Tina Mistry @Aico_Limited #UKhousing (sponsored)

An @insidehousing survey has found that the areas that residents feed back to landlords about are repairs getting done, dissatisfaction of repairs and poor timing of appointments #UKhousing (sponsored) @Aico_Limited

In association with:

As stories of individual tenants struggling to get their repairs sorted have been blasted across national media, the eye of government has turned to how social landlords are handling not only repairs, but also complaints when things go wrong. In February the Housing Ombudsman found a 53% increase in complaints from residents regarding repairs and maintenance between the final three months of 2020 and 2021, which it said was driven by “poor communication, excessive delays and poor record-keeping”.

The following month, the government released its draft Social Housing Regulation Bill to raise the standard of landlord services, including plans to proactively monitor consumer standards at social landlords, which became law in June. This means that for the first time in more than a decade, the Regulator of Social Housing will measure the quality of homes, repairs, complaint-handling and how landlords engage with their tenants – marking an important shift.

It is against this backdrop that Inside Housing launched an exclusive survey, in partnership with Aico, to understand how the sector provides channels for residents to feed back and make complaints on critical issues including repairs, as well as how satisfaction is monitored.

Landlords told Inside Housing they use different forms of communication depending on why residents were getting in touch. South East-based Sutton Housing Society, for example, which manages just under 500 homes, sends out ‘birthday card surveys’ as part of a series of surveys into customer satisfaction. The group’s operations director, Glynis Gatenby, who is responsible for landlord services, including customer satisfaction, staff training and governance, says these surveys have an average return rate of 34%. “We send out a birthday card with a survey inside about our service, which includes [questions around] feeling safe in your home, whether it’s well maintained etc, to any of our residents who have a birthday that month,” Ms Gatenby says.

Her organisation also has a systematic approach to collating and learning from complaints, which includes putting them into a spreadsheet and following up with relevant staff members to get those issues addressed, as well as holding monthly team meetings to run through survey results and share learnings.

On this, Tina Mistry, relationships manager at Aico, says: “The sector’s willingness to engage with residents is positive, however with such a significant number not setting customer feedback targets, there is more work to be done to engage a broader customer base. When taken together with the finding that more than 40% still find it difficult to engage with some residents, it’s clear the sector still has a long journey ahead to ensure all residents’ voices are heard and acted upon.”

The bulk (94%) of respondents said they had increased the use of digital communications since the start of the pandemic. This is unsurprising, given organisations were unable at times to physically see their residents, but subsequent comments from those spoken to for this report, as well as findings from wider Inside Housing reports on digital transformation across the sector, suggest these changes are here to stay.

Respondents increased how many text message reminders they send for building work, gas checks or how to best reach housing managers (34%), increased email newsletters (25%) and held meetings for residents online (22%).

Westward Housing, which operates in Devon and Cornwall, has been using digital communication tools to empower residents and reduce the amount of unnecessary call-outs its organisation gets relating to repairs and maintenance.

In numbers

35%
Respondents who don’t set customer feedback targets

83%
Believe their organisations have clear channels of communication

23%
Received most feedback on residents being unhappy with repairs work

15%
Received most feedback on poor timing of appointments

Elsewhere, despite most respondents saying they have good channels of communication, nearly 16% admitted that their channels of communication could be better. In addition, a significant 35% said they do not set customer feedback targets, with 44% saying that just up to 20% of their customers give feedback.

The group’s chief executive, Barbara Shaw, says her organisation has and will continue to increase its digital communication channels and has been using a platform called ‘Response I’, which enables surveyors to video call residents when they have an issue, to assess the problem without having to make a face-to-face visit.

“Through the pandemic, that was a very useful tool,” Ms Shaw says. “It helped immensely, especially since our stock is so dispersed. It means the customer feels they are getting that immediate response from us rather than having to wait for a surveyor to go down and decide what the problem is within their home.”

She adds: “We also try and put lots of ‘how to’ videos on our website, but quite often people are nervous [about this] and you can understand that, but if you’re just asking them to repressurise the boiler and have got somebody showing them [virtually] or speaking to them as they’re doing it, they feel a lot more confident.”

Nick Batt, director of customer experience at Pobl Group in South Wales, says his organisation is also looking to add more guides to its website for residents to help reduce call-outs, as well as to reduce the amount of time residents have to wait for certain repairs.

He adds: “Customer education is a big thing. Historically, [the tenant/landlord relationship] has been a bit parent/child, when actually there’s a lot more that tenants can do. And that’s not trying to push the effort on them, [rather] there are things that are well within their gift. So, we can start out by being really clear when a tenant moves in about where the responsibility lies in terms of good practice in maintaining their home and we can be better through self-serve channels about how to fix things like boiler pressure.”

Tying in with comments from the Housing Ombudsman, the organisations Inside Housing spoke to acknowledged that clear, regular communication is key to reducing complaints. This includes the importance of keeping residents up to date about not only the works the organisation is carrying out, but also why it is carrying them out. This was in response to a survey finding that showed which areas residents feed back on the most, with the general process of getting the repairs done coming out top (25%). Being dissatisfied with the repair work itself (23%) and poor timing of appointments (15%) followed.

More generally on improving the customer journey, Mr Batt notes: “The feedback you get is massively driven by how you set expectations at the start. If you want to get really good feedback about your repairs service, then you need to be really open and honest at the start of that journey to the customer.”