Challenge

The Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) Standard requires all registered providers of social housing to collect and report annually to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) on their performance on a core set of defined measures to provide tenants with greater transparency about their landlord’s performance. The TSMs include 12 tenant perception measures which needed to meet the regulator’s requirements as set out in guidance.

BCP Homes is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council’s (BCP) combined housing service that oversees approximately 9,500 homes across Bournemouth and Poole. BCP Homes, as it owns more than 1,000 dwelling units of relevant housing stock, is required to collect information and report TSMs on an annual basis to the Regulator of Social Housing.

BCP Homes commissioned Enventure Research to conduct and analyse a tenant satisfaction survey to collect the 12 tenant perception measures in autumn 2023 so that they can be reported to RSH by March 2024. This was the first time that these measures have been collected on behalf of BCP Homes.

Approach

The questionnaire for the survey was designed by Enventure Research and BCP Homes, using the 12 TSM questions as set out in the RSH guidance with some follow-up questions to understand reasons for tenants’ dissatisfaction.

A database of tenant records was provided by BCP Homes to administer the survey. Although a telephone survey approach was the preferred methodology, as BCP Homes did not have telephone numbers for all tenants, it was decided that additional methodologies (online/email survey and postal survey) would be used to ensure all tenants had a fair selection of being selected in the sampling frame.

The questionnaire was programmed into survey software to allow data to be collected via telephone interviews, an online survey and a postal survey, following RSH guidance.

1,000 records were drawn at random for the postal and online survey, stratified by age group, stock type, sex and area in line with tenant population characteristics. Within this sampling frame, tenants for whom BCP Homes held a valid email address were sent email invitations and reminders for the online survey and the remainder were sent postal surveys. The postal surveys included a pre-paid envelope for tenants to return their completed questionnaire at no cost to themselves.

A stratified random sampling approach for 900 completed telephone interviews was then undertaken using the rest of the tenant database supplied by BCP Homes.

The telephone survey was administered by an experienced team of Interviewer Quality Control Scheme (IQCS) trained interviewers. To achieve a broadly representative sample, quotas were set on sex, age group, location (Bournemouth and Poole) and stock type (general needs and housing for older people/sheltered housing).

Interviewer shifts took place at different times, on both weekdays and weekends, to ensure that all segments of the tenant population had an equal opportunity to participate.

Tenants were incentivised to take part in the survey by being invited to take part in a free prize draw to win shopping vouchers.