Social landlords must set targets for the completion of responsive repairs and collect and publish accurate performance data against them. This has been a requirement of the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) in its RP02 Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) since April 2023.

But HQN has found that some social landlords are inadvertently under-reporting their data on responsive repairs. This can obviously mask potential service failures and expose landlords to regulatory intervention.

These unreported repairs are like ghosts in social landlords’ repairs systems: they exist but are not seen or reported as they should be. They may also explain the gap between landlords’ own RP02 figures and what tenants report in TSM surveys – or what the Housing Ombudsman finds when investigating complaints.