The long awaited Decision Statement on the Consultation on the Introduction of Tenant Satisfaction Measures has today been published by the Regulator of Social Housing.
Registered Providers (RPs) will need to start to collect and record data prescribed by the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) as of 1 April 2023. They must provide this information to support effective scrutiny by tenants of performance.
Registered providers must:
- Collect and process information specified by the Regulator relating to their performance against the TSMs. The information must be collected within a timeframe set by the Regulator and must meet the Regulator’s requirements.
- Annually publish their performance against the tenant satisfaction measures. This information must be published in a manner that is timely, clear, and easily accessed by tenants.
- Annually submit to the Regulator information specified by the Regulator relating to their performance against those measures.
There are tailored requirements for small RPs but a voluntary pilot will be run in order to gather data as to whether these are adequate or they should be subject to the same requirements.
It is the responsibility of Boards of private registered providers and governing bodies of local authority registered providers to ensure that reported TSMs have been calculated accurately and in accordance with regulatory requirements.
The TSMs are a part of the wider direction of travel towards proactive consumer regulation and the aims of the TSMs are to provide tenants with greater transparency about their landlord’s performance. To achieve this, it is critical that TSMs are calculated and reported by providers on a consistent basis. The rationale for implementing the TSMs is threefold:
- to allow tenants to “scrutinise” their landlords performance;
- to give RPs an insight into their performance, and
- to allow the Regulator to check if RPs are complying with the regulatory standards, with particular attention paid to how the additional data will ensure safe and decent homes.
It is important to note that although the TSMs are in substantively the same form as set out in the Consultation some of the TSMs have been refined and clarified as a result of the feedback provided with the Regulator concluding that this has improved the measures and will provide more transparency about landlord performance. Of particular note, the standard relating to a home being well maintained and safe has been split into two individual TSMs and the proposed TSM relating to tenant knowledge of how to make a complaint has been removed completely.
The technical requirements have also been published which provide further detail of the Regulator’s requirements.
RPs will need to start to prepare in earnest with the Tenant Satisfaction Measures Standard coming into effect on the 1 April 2023.
We will shortly be running a webinar to explore the new Standard and TSM requirements in detail but if you would like to discuss or require any further information in the meantime please contact Donna McCarthy or Samantha Grix.
