By Alistair McIntosh, HQN CEO

Grenfell is what happens when you don’t listen to tenants. So, ministers have tried to put this right ever since. That’s why they called for satisfaction surveys to be mandatory.

The idea was that tenants could see how their landlord was doing versus others and ask tough questions. On top of that the competitive spirit would kick in, and landlords would strive to move up the table. This formula works so well for the banks that they take first and second place in the UK customer satisfaction index. How’s it going in housing? Your guess is as good as mine!

We’ve just seen the second year of satisfaction results. They are a great tool for RSH inspectors. The teams can go in and grill landlords by asking questions like: Who did the survey? How did you pick the sample? Did you speak to people face to face, over the phone or via the internet?

All these factors can skew the results. That’s why the RSH is telling the rest of us to “proceed with caution” – or, in other words, don’t compare apples with pears. So much for opening the sector up to tenant scrutiny. The original aim has gone for a burton.

What should the RSH have done? They should have copied what works for the banks. There the regulator appoints one polling firm to carry out all the surveys the exact same way. Bank bosses do everything they can to climb the table. Yes, the spur of the league table works. Arguably housing is more complex than retail banking so you might need different leagues, or divisions, to cater for landlords dealing with, say, the elderly (a cohort that tends to drive satisfaction up) or London (the toughest crowd to please). Maybe you could have different ratings for different parts of the landlord. We already have a separate league for shared ownership (which I will come back to). Back in the day, Ipsos MORI used to compare expected satisfaction levels, based on demographics, to actual satisfaction. Could we try that again?

Anything is better than the present free for all. We might as well just use spare capacity on ERNIE to generate the figures. That’s the acronym for the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment that picks out your premium bonds. When you read the C ratings you will search in vain for any mention of satisfaction ratings. What’s all this effort in aid of? We’re obscuring performance, not holding it up to the light. This is the opposite of what ministers wanted.

The regulator insists that banks display their satisfaction rating “prominently” online. We don’t do this in housing. Why not?

If we were that transparent, we’d struggle to sell another shared ownership flat. Some of the biggest names in our industry have satisfaction rates down at the 20 and 30 percent levels. This is a crisis akin to British Leyland. A poor reputation for quality sunk the company. Are we at risk of that too?

The satisfaction surveys have shown us the depth of the problem. And that’s a good thing. How will the RSH respond? What’s the plan for when we start to ‘build, baby, build’? Is it wise to add more complex flats to the mix? So far, low shared owner satisfaction has been no barrier at all to the RSH awarding its top rating for consumer services. This will come back to bite us.

In the banking satisfaction league tables new challengers like Monzo, Chase and Starling are the cream of the crop. Will we see the same in housing? Time will tell, but already L&G, Heylo and Sage are in the top 15 for shared ownership.

Overall, the satisfaction surveys are helping the RSH to ask better questions and give us a much-needed wakeup call on the crisis in shared ownership for flats. But the figures must be consistent and used by tenants and shared owners. We just can’t have a closed shop for inspectors and professionals.

As always there are some landlords doing better than others. The task is to find out why and where possible apply the lessons. That’s the value of the exercise. And I’m certainly seeing better tailoring of services after the surveys.