The Week in Housing: unlawful mutants and suppressing MMC risk

Good afternoon.

Data on tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs) will be a core pillar of the new consumer regulation regime, but how are social landlords capturing it??

Our detailed research this week ?sheds the first light on what is the probably the largest single data collection exercise the sector has ever attempted.?

The findings, which relate to more than 200 social landlords – 116 housing associations and 87 councils – show whether the sector is using phone surveys, emails, in-person conversations or other methods; whether they will be using trackers or single surveys; and how many of their residents they are surveying.

All of this might feel like simple detail, but it is not. We know that these methods can have a major impact on the results, and the stats they produce will be a critical part of benchmarking the new regime.?

We also learned this week that the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) will run its own survey of tenants . This appears to be a benchmark to check the TSMs against.?

If, for example, a landlord scores 95% on its TSMs, but 32% in the regulator’s survey, they will have some tough questions to answer.

With TSMs come many other major new responsibilities, in an operating environment that has never been more complex for social landlords.

In that light, it is instructive to learn the skills behind the boards and executive teams charged with steering organisations through it. Our new survey, which we believe to be the largest analysis of housing association governance and leadership in England, sheds some light

You can read it here , and it provides many insights into who is really running the sector. For example, a significant proportion of board membership from the largest associations is made up of people from financial or property industry backgrounds, with more than a quarter (27%) from these areas.?

In stark contrast, the lion’s share (30%) of board members in smaller associations have professional social housing experience.

To read the rest of the Week in Housing newsletter,?sign up here .

You can also register to Inside Housing by?clicking here ?and read one free Inside Housing article every 14 days. For full access to Inside Housing,?click here to subscribe .

Inside Housing delivers a comprehensive information service for UK social housing professionals. We are the unrivalled source for news, analysis and insight.