Annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey 2024-2025

The Regulator of Social Housing requires social landlords to carry out annual assessments of tenant satisfaction and publish the results along with key data regarding how their housing services and homes are managed. A set of tenant satisfaction measures (more commonly known as TSMs) have been produced to make the performance of landlords more visible to tenants and help them to hold their landlords to account.

There are 22 TSMs, some of which are measured directly by the council such as safety checks, and others which are measured by tenants voicing their views within a survey.

TSM Survey 2024-25

Ashford Borough Council conducted its Tenant Satisfaction Survey over a six week period from 21 August 2024 to 4 October 2024. The survey was conducted by The Learning Foundation (TLF) who conducted this survey for us the previous year, with surveys being carried out by phone, web link and post.

The information collected during the survey period and our housing management information has been submitted to the Regulator of Social Housing. Our results have been published below in accordance with guidance from the Regulator which you can find below.

Management information TSMs

Management information covers a variety of areas from how many safety compliance checks we carry out on our properties, as well as how many repairs, complaints and cases of anti-social behaviour are raised with us.

A summary of these management figures can be seen below:

Building Safety

• Proportion of homes for which all gas safety checks have been carried out: 100%
• Proportion of homes for which all required fire risk assessments have been carried out: 100%
• Proportion of homes for which all required asbestos management surveys or re-inspections have been carried out: 100%
• Proportion of homes for which all required legionella risk assessments have been carried out: 100%
• Proportion of homes for which all required communal passenger lift safety checks have been carried out: 100%

Antisocial Behaviour (ASB)

• Number of anti-social behaviour cases, opened per 1,000 homes: 72
• Number of anti-social behaviour cases that involve hate incidents opened per 1,000 homes: 0.2

Decent Homes Standard (DHS) and Repairs*

• Proportion of homes that do not meet the Decent Homes Standard: 23.3%
• Proportion of non-emergency responsive repairs completed within the landlord's target timescale: 73.6%
• Proportion of emergency responsive repairs completed within the landlord's target timescale: 98.1%

Complaints

• Number of stage one complaints received per 1,000 homes: 87.2
• Number of stage two complaints received per 1,000 homes: 19.2
• Proportion of stage one complaints responded to within the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code timescales: 66.2
• Proportion of stage two complaints responded to within the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code timescales: 83

Tenant perception survey TSMs

Please view the summary of our survey and approach for the year two survey in the following document Final Method Information ABC TSM Year 2 [pdf] 565KB

The TSM survey asks tenants for their perception on subjects such as property repairs, maintaining building safety, effective complaints handling, respectful and helpful tenant engagement, and responsible neighbourhood management. This direct feedback from tenants ensures that we understand what we are doing well and where improvements might need to be made.

Data collected is covered by privacy and data protection laws and any tenants that took part could opt to be anonymous with their responses, or provide their details attached to feedback. 

Perception Survey Results

Firstly, we would like to say a big thank you to all those who took part in our 2024/5 satisfaction survey. Hearing first hand experiences and honest feedback about our homes and services really does help us to look at ways we can improve.

This year's survey was launched on 21 August 2024 and ran for a six-week period and was carried out by our research partner TLF on our behalf. All tenants were given the opportunity to respond either via post, telephone or online via an email link. We received 1,191 responses, representing 23% of all our properties. Weighting of the data was not required to represent our tenant population, as weighting by age group and tenure type made less than 1% difference to the overall satisfaction score. We can be very confident (95%) that the data closely represents how satisfied most tenants would be even if they did not respond to the survey. No incentives were offered to tenants to complete the survey.

Below is an overview of how satisfied our tenants are with Ashford Borough Council (ABC) across the 12 TSMs:

• 59.2% of tenants are satisfied with the service provided by ABC
• 61.5% are satisfied with the overall repairs service from ABC (only those that have raised a repair within the past 12 months answered this)
• 53.4% are satisfied with the time taken to complete their most recent repair
• 61.1% are satisfied that ABC provides a home that is well maintained
• 68.7% are satisfied that ABC provides a home that is safe
• 44.8% are satisfied that ABC listens to their views and acts upon them
• 59.6% are satisfied that ABC keeps them informed about things that matter to them
• 60.1% are satisfied with ABC treating them fairly and with respect
• 24.9% are satisfied with ABC's approach to complaints handling (only those that have raised a complaint in the past 12 months answered this)
• 55.6% are satisfied with ABC keeping communal areas clean and well maintained (only those that live in a property with communal areas inside/outside answered this)
• 49.6% are satisfied that ABC makes a positive contribution to their neighbourhood
• 48.3% are satisfied with ABC's approach to handling anti-social behaviour

Survey Action Plan

Every survey comment and response have been examined and analysed to formulate an action plan to address issues raised, with the aim of improving satisfaction levels for tenants. We will be focusing on the TSMs where tenants are less satisfied, as well as addressing issues raised with our repairs service that are leading to overall dissatisfaction. Some of our key actions identified from your feedback:

Promote our Estate Walkabouts and make sure tenants know how they can get involved or report local neighbourhood concerns. If you would like to attend an upcoming inspection, let us know by completing our booking form, details of the upcoming inspections and the booking form are available on our tenant engagement homepage. 

Introduce customer satisfaction surveys following the completion of a repair job. If you have had a repair job completed in the last month you will have been asked for your feedback. If you receive a request for feedback following a repair request, please let us know how your experience was throughout the process so we can use your feedback to monitor improvements and identify concerns.

Introduce more opportunities for tenants to meet their housing officers face to face. We have started running ‘Housing Surgeries’ on the first Wednesday of every month at our offices at International House from 9:30am - 11:30pm. If these are successful, we will be rolling them out to other locations across the borough.

Introduce more opportunities for tenants to have a say in how we run our housing service. Tenants can get more involved by registering your interest in our Tenant Scrutiny Panel and Tenants Voice Group. Find out more about these opportunities and register your interest on our website, or by emailing tenant.contact@ashford.gov.uk. 

Improve customer service levels and availability of staff for tenants to get in touch with the repairs
team. Recruitment has taken place and availability, call waiting times and call dropping data is being monitored for further improvements where opportunities are identified.

Introduce a programme of resident service days to bring our service to our tenants. We will be at Victoria Park on Wednesday, 30 July 2025 from 10am until 2pm to listen to you and register or respond to any concerns you may have. There will be an ice cream van and a variety of family fun activities for you and your neighbours to get involved in. More dates will be announced shortly.  

Actions yet to be completed: 

• We will conduct mystery shopping across our housing service to make sure our teams are contactable, identify any weaknesses and rectify any concerns identified.
• Introduce audits to monitor the quality of work following repairs and the quality work done to get a
  property ready for a new tenant.
• The results of the stock condition survey and the resulting planned works programme will be published so you kept up to date and can plan for upcoming refurbishments to your home and communal areas.
• We will produce and publicise a ‘Rent and Service Charge Setting Policy’ so you can see how we set
  our rent and approach service charge adjustments.
• Update our tenants and our leaseholders handbook.