By Rob Gershon, HQN associate and council tenant

The big question ahead of this year’s tenant satisfaction measure (TSM) results was whether they could improve on the distinctly average set of scores from first time round. The answer, it’s fair to say, is not really.

The upward trend in this year’s TSMs is marginal at best, with reported satisfaction on repairs remaining a particular issue and the frankly abysmal overall satisfaction for shared owners still being the two main takeaways.

The Regulator of Social Housing has retained its slightly aloof interpretation of these statistics this year, attempting to focus on the ‘green shoots’ of improvement, but the long and short of it is that more than eight years on from Grenfell, with the promise of the TSMs being to allow residents to compare their landlord’s performance with other organisations, this fundamental function of the measures remains unfulfilled.

Meanwhile, as a sector, and as tenants and residents, we are still waiting for the final version of the government’s Competence and Conduct Standard. The MHCLG website is currently full of detail from the recent consultation on the standard. There was a disappointingly small number of tenants identified in the overall cohort of respondents, but it would be hypocritical of me to complain about this as I personally did not find the time to offer my own tenant-view response either.

However, there is a risk that the sector-centric approach risks not making the changes so badly needed. It is already debatable whether the high-level approach favoured by government and the sector will produce the desired results. Like the TSMs, the ultimate aim of the standard should be to improve the experiences of residents with their landlord. The standard is being established in response to the mass of data accumulated by the previous government in the Green Paper preparations for what eventually became the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023.

The Grenfell Tower fire highlighted some abysmal practices within the sector, and during the ministerial roadshows it became apparent that tenants across the country were experiencing what might politely be thought of as communication issues, but are clearly in fact just terrible, and often indecent, treatment by the people in charge of their homes.

The subsequent flurry of media interest, including Daniel Hewitt’s ITV investigation into squalor and a now almost constant, if thankfully thin, stream of news articles on damp and mould – and more importantly the way landlords respond to this and other issues – should have made it clear that what is needed across the sector is a change in culture. This was at the heart of tenants’ Green Paper responses and it is the only way to address experiences of people being routinely let down and then treated poorly when trying to remedy it.

The Housing Ombudsman has written specifically about the importance of culture on a number of occasions in the past, not least its spotlight report from January 2024 on attitudes, respect and rights – an ongoing project for the ombudsman which has birthed a number of pieces of practical advice for landlords in how to improve the way their staff interact with other human beings.

Ongoing media reports of tenants being let down or treated without the respect – and often legally obligated rights – they are entitled to, along with the core failings highlighted by the TSMs, suggest there is still a long way to go for ‘landlord learning’. The key outcome for tenants – being treated with a bit of dignity and being able to expect that their landlord is meeting at least the basic safety requirements for fire safety still feels some distance away.

The slightly reluctant response of some of the sector to embrace the underlying point of Awaab’s Law – treating people equally and with respect and with a sense of urgency when their health is threatened by their home, also feels at odds with the key purposes of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act and its mission to make things right.

It is not really rocket science to get the triumvirate of ‘customer service’ right. The three component elements are communication, basic human dignity and a grasp of the history and legislation that underpin the job of everyone in ‘housing’. The TSMs show us there is still some way to go on this, and while we await the final shape of the Competence and Conduct standard, the lack of consistency across the other improvements on offer in recent years should give us pause for thought about the overall direction of travel.