Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) for mhs homes group
The Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) have been introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing in England to assess how well landlords are doing in providing good quality homes and services.
TSMs tell us how customers whose homes or buildings we manage rate our performance based on yearly survey results. The TSMs help tenants hold social housing landlords to account and we must show the results of our surveys.
The measures focus on five key themes:
- Keeping properties in good repair
- Maintaining building safety
- Respectful and helpful engagement
- Effective handling of complaints
- Responsible neighbourhood management
There are 22 measures, 12 of these measures come directly from customer feedback, 10 come from information we hold in our systems on our operational activity.
These measures have been designed to drive up standards and improve the quality of social housing.
If you’re an mhs homes customer, you can use this information to hold us accountable and make informed decisions about your housing situation. The Social Housing Regulator can use this, and other information, to scrutinise our performance and ensure we are meeting the regulatory standards.
How we’re performing on TSMs
The first year of formal TSM data collection started on 1 April 2023 and we reported the full year to both the regulator and our customers in June 2024.
The results below show how we’re performing on the 12 tenant perception measures.
The information was collected from our customers through telephone surveys. For us to meet our requirements, we need to conduct a certain number of surveys for the amount of properties we manage.
We spoke to 1,658 customers over the year – that’s 16.7% of our 7,539 customers. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share your views.
The results show our combined Group performance which includes mhs homes and Heart of Medway. You can view the results for Heart of Medway, which is regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing.
Overall satisfaction with the service provided by us... 81%
Listening and acting on what you tell us
We want to get it right for our customers and we’re using your feedback and experiences to focus our efforts, or do things better.
Delivering the services that are important to you means listening and acting on what you tell us. We’re learning and making changes in areas where our performance is falling below the standards we’ve set ourselves, and that you deserve.
Repairs
We know some of you are waiting longer than you should for a repair. We’ve brought in extra people to help us get out to you as quickly as possible. This includes building our in-house repairs and home improvements team to reduce the use of sub-contractors. And adding more grounds maintenance staff and caretakers to keep your estates clean and well maintained.
Complaints
We don’t always get it right, but we aim to respond to any complaints as quickly as possible. In the past year, we’ve handled 94% of your complaints within the timescales set out by the Housing Ombudsman.
You’ve told us we need to improve our approach to handling your complaints. We’ve listened and introduced a quality assurance framework. By giving us a clearer view of our complaint handling processes, it’s helping to highlight any gaps in our systems and identify any training needs for our teams.
We’ll have more staff to focus on listening to your feedback and learning from complaints. They’ll develop customer engagement groups and panels to make sure your needs and priorities continue to drive improvements.
Responding to anti-social behaviour
We’re bringing in more people to manage tenancy and neighbourhood services to improve the way we handle ASB. You’ll be able to build relationships with the people providing your services, and you’ll see increased visibility of our teams visiting your area or your home. Our improvement plan includes a ‘triage’ process to prioritise the most serious ASB incidents, helping us target resources more quickly and effectively.
We’ll continue to measure tenant satisfaction
We’ll continue to use telephone surveys and other methods to measure tenant satisfaction, in line with the regulatory requirements. This information will be submitted to the regulator and shared with customers on an annual basis.
Before the TSMs framework was introduced, we were already conducting regular customer feedback surveys to hear how we’re performing from our customers’ perspective.
The TSMs have been introduced by the Regulator to make it easier for people to compare landlords, and for us to compare our performance with other social housing providers.
During the second year of TSM collection, we want to demonstrate how our performance is changing, and how we’re making improvements based on what our customers tell us.
These measures are part of wider changes by the government to increase proactive consumer regulation and ensure social housing across the country is of a decent standard, with customers having their voices heard.
They apply to all registered social housing providers in England and are part of new laws introduced by the Social Housing (Regulation) Act.
This Act provides the legal basis for many of the measures set out in the Government’s Social Housing White Paper.