As we approach the 30th June deadline for social housing providers to submit results to the Regulator, we’ve reflected on what we’ve learnt from the first full year of Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM).

Here are 5 things which you should consider to help with your 2024/25 TSM plans.

1. Accurate and complete contact details make everything easier.

A lot of missing telephone numbers or email addresses means tenants are automatically excluded from a telephone or online survey. Adopting postal or face to face approach quickly becomes very expensive and potentially prohibitive. The spirit of TSM is to be fully inclusive which makes accurate contact information a priority. Maintaining accurate contact details will also allow effective communication and help you engage tenants with your results.

2. Weighting is not always necessary.

Where demographics are under or overrepresented its best to carry out the analysis to understand the impact on scores if the data is weighted and then decide if the difference is significant enough to weight the data. Often, the differences may not be significant enough to justify weighting, allowing for a more straightforward and unweighted analysis.

3. Surveying 'Managed by Other Agencies' tenants is challenging.

Most providers found this dificult. We found it often requires a bit more creativity and a good introduction to the survey to make it meaningful for participants.

4. Additional questions and extra information.

Asking the right additional questions and appending extra information to participant data will help maximise insights and learning from your TSM analysis. Think very carefully about your additional questions and focus on the areas that matter such as safety, repairs and complaints.

5. There are lots of factors that influence the scores.

Methodology is one, but you must also consider age, region and size of provider. Comparing yourself to others is interesting and useful but remember they are not pure like for like comparisons.