Tenant Feedback Survey 2018

During March 2018 EHSL distributed a survey by post to all of its tenants. EHSL received 35 responses from the 143 forms submitted, a response rate of 24.4%. This is significantly improved from the five responses received in the previous years’ survey.

Tenants were listed as the respondent in the vast majority of cases, possibly because EHSL offered its tenants an opportunity to enter a prize draw for participating. Support staff and other respondents were not eligible to enter but may have completed responses on behalf of a tenant. Some sites had multiple occupants respond, others appeared to have none.

In one case, 4 identical responses were received from the same site. 20 responses were marked with the respondent’s name. This allowed us to more closely consider specific comments about response times and repairs. Some unnamed responses mentioned maintenance issues but we were unable to identify these against the site due to it being unlisted.

How satisfied are you with the following statements about EHSL’s services?

How satisfied are you with the following aspects of the services provided by EHSL?

Following a review of the feedback received, we have established the following:

• Tenants wish for faster response times on repairs, and for communication to be improved.
• Quality of repairs has improved but response times have not.
• Tenants are not aware of financial information such as how rents and service charges are set, and how arrears are managed. This indicates that information is not made available to them, or it is published in an inaccessible format.
• The areas most praised related to the accessibility of the information provided by EHSL, general quality of service, how tenants are treated and kept up to date, and how easy it is to communicate with EHSL.
• The areas least praised related to availability of emergency maintenance, the time taken to respond, and the availability of EHSL staff. Concerns about the availability of emergency maintenance may be affected by tenants’ perceptions of what is and isn’t an emergency.
• The areas that tenants were least likely to have an opinion on relate to the effectiveness of the finance department, the handling of complaints, transparency on rent setting, and the value for money of service charges and rent. This may be because respondents haven’t had any engagement in these areas.
• Tenants were generally satisfied with the overall service provided by EHSL and the quality of the home.
• The areas scored the highest related to Gardening services, the overall quality, the provision of Pest control where required, and the quality of contractors sent.
• The areas scoring the lowest related to communication about repairs, response times, and cleaning services.
• Communication about repairs may be compromised because EHSL tends to liaise with care staff and therefore doesn’t have any communication directly with tenants about repairs. Also, care staff may not share information between themselves.
• A high volume of comments relate to response time for repairs. Where response times have been met, the lack of satisfaction may be connected to tenants’ expectations being greater than the published response times, a lack of awareness of the category the job is allocated to (i.e. emergency, urgent, routine), and repeat visits for complicated jobs.
• In some cases tenants mentioned repairs which have not been reported to EHSL. This is indicative of a lack of communication to EHSL. EHSL is unable to respond to requests until they have been made.

As a result of the feedback, EHSL intends to do the following.

• Make improvements to how repair requests are recorded and categorised, and the systems used by 24/7 call-centre staff.
• Introduce a structured follow up programme after works have been completed, to include works which are the responsibility of another party (i.e. property owner)
• Review the quality of communal cleaning services on a site specific basis.
• Increase number of inspections in order to pick-up maintenance issues at an earlier date.
• Publish easy-read information relating to rents, service charges, and finance related matters.
• Conduct exercise to gather more detail on repair response times.
• Increase written communication regarding contractor visits, removing reliance on phone calls.
• Implement a programme of outbound calls to check in with care providers and tenants to try to identify maintenance issues at an early stage.