Annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey

Every year, Ashford Borough Council invites tenants of all our social housing properties to have their say on its performance and how well it meets their housing needs.

The Regulator of Social Housing asks that all local authority landlords carry out an annual assessment of tenant satisfaction. A set of tenant satisfaction measures (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 carried out, and others which are measured by tenants voicing their views via a survey.

The short survey asks tenants for their satisfaction about subjects such as property repairs, maintaining building safety, effective complaints handling, respectful and helpful tenant engagement, and responsible neighbourhood management. It will let tenants see how well Ashford Borough Council is doing, as well as ensure that we understand what needs to be improved.

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. 

2023-2024 survey

Firstly, we would like to say a big thank you to all those who took part in our 2023/4 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 2023 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 1,041 responses, representing 20% 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.

2023-2024 results

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

• 63.2% of tenants are satisfied with the service provided by ABC
• 64.7% are satisfied with the overall repairs service from ABC (only those that have raised a repair within the past 12 months answered this)
• 59.0% are satisfied with the time taken to complete their most recent repair
• 65.8% are satisfied that ABC provides a home that is well maintained
• 72.0% are satisfied that ABC provides a home that is safe
• 48.6% are satisfied that ABC listens to their views and acts upon them
• 59.7% are satisfied that ABC keeps them informed about things that matter to them
• 67.0% are satisfied with ABC treating them fairly and with respect
• 27.0% are satisfied with ABC's approach to complaints handling (only those that have raised a complaint in the past 12 months answered this)
• 61.6% 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)
• 52.4% are satisfied that ABC makes a positive contribution to their neighbourhood
• 44.6% are satisfied with ABC's approach to handling anti-social behaviour

For those that would like to see the data in a more visual way our Annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey Results [pdf] 213KB is available to download.

Or download our Annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey Results one page summary document [pdf] 219KB

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 are:

• Any outstanding repairs and actions required raised in survey responses to be investigated and completed
• Additional complaints, anti-social behaviour handling, and customer service training for Housing staff
• Tenant feedback forms introduced to those who have made complaints or reported anti-social behaviour to understand how we are handling cases
• Publishing our performance statistics from tenant feedback forms and management data for repairs, complaints, and anti-social behaviour
• Publishing lessons learned from tenant feedback forms and performance management data for repairs, complaints and anti-social behaviour
• Improve communication between housing service teams and tenants, such as more updates on outstanding repairs/cases, and provide more visibility and ease of contact of staff for tenants

We will track and evidence our work in actioning the plan and will be updating this webpage across the year to let you know how we are doing.

Get in touch

If you would like to get in touch regarding the survey or chat through the results in more detail please call Tenant Engagement on 01233 330573 or email us on tenant.contact@ashford.gov.uk.