The Social Housing White Paper

An article in the 95th edition of the Resolution Magazine for Antisocial Behaviour Professionals in the UK, written by the HUBSolutions MD, Peter Hall MA

Is your IT ready for the Social Housing White Paper?

 The Social Housing White Paper places a new emphasis on monitoring landlord performance in respect of Anti-Social Behaviour. Currently ASB performance is not routinely reported to anyone, nor is the landlord independently inspected in respect of this service.

The White Paper sets out to create satisfaction measures for ASB which will relate to the number of reports received and the satisfaction of Tenants with the service provided. 

While the specifics remain undetermined, there will have to be some prescription on all these issues, in order that data provided by different landlords can be compared and minimum standards can be set.   This will eventually filter down to the recording systems, which today are mainly computerised.

As a provider of one of those solutions – the product known as Caseworks - the paper presents an unknown challenge, but also an opportunity for better, more consistent working across our customer base. 

In a paper published by the Regulator of Social Housing, called Tenant Satisfaction Measures (2021) the following timetable for implementation is laid out as follows: -

Winter 21 - Spring 22 RSH runs consultation on standard, TSMs and technical guidance, including further stakeholder engagement

Spring – Summer 22 RSH analyses feedback from consultation

Late Summer 22 RSH publishes decision statement, TSMs and technical guidance. Expected implementation date 1 April 2023

Autumn 22 -Spring 23 Providers prepare systems

April 2023 - March 2024 Providers collect first year of data

Summer 2024 Providers submit data to regulator

Autumn 2024 RSH publishes 2023-24 provider data

The Regulator has given an indication of Tenants Satisfaction Measures required. In respect of ASB, which falls within the Theme of “Responsible Neighbourhood Management”.  There is an emphasis on (1) communal areas, (2) the number of ASB complaints (3) Tenant satisfaction with the handling of ASB.  Using these new measures, the Regulator will seek to drive improvements and ensure landlords meet consumer standards.

Acknowledging complaints

The White Paper requires providers to Tackle (ASB) by enabling tenants to know who is responsible and who can support and assist them.  This requires, from the computerised monitoring system, at the very least, a facility to record initial contact, or acknowledgement of cases, and certainly should include an option for an automated letter / Email / SMS detailing the officer responsible and their contact details.

Counting Complaints

This may seem like the simplest of functions, but there are many variations in the way that complaints can be counted and many ways in which ASB can fail to be counted.  Where there is a dedicated ASB Team, this may seem to be straight forward, as a new case is opened for each new complaint.  Where ASB is handled by Housing Staff with generic duties, the point of recording becomes blurred.  ASB can become part of an “ongoing tenancy matters conversation” between Tenant and Officer, which never make it to a computer keyboard.

However, the largest omissions are often caused by specialisations outside the core Estate Management or specialist ASB duties.  These are Sheltered housing, Temporary Housing and responsibility for Communal Areas.  In many cases, the computer system set up to deal with Complainant vs Offender within an Estate Management context, will no longer be suitable for these teams.  Alternative options – as part of the core ASB system – or an interface between the systems used by these teams and the ASB System may be required.  Our company has created, for various customers, an Estate Services module with mobile data entry, a Supported Housing module, and an interface with a commonly used system for logging Estate issues, known as “Uniform”.  However, each of these options has been a one-off for a specific customer, not generally adopted across our customer base.

Finally, there is an issue about the method of counting. For most of our customers, a “Case” is created when a new complaint is received. The statistics which our customers most often request, is the count of cases created, over a given period.  This is the most minimal definition of “counting complaints” and not one which would be recognised by Tenants, who would consider that every time they contact their landlord about “another incident like the last one”, that is a complaint.    The Tenant definition would multiply the count considerably and require that staff are diligent in recording subsequent incidents, and do not merely log it in some free text facility.

There also needs to be standardisation about how to record further incidents, after the initial case is closed, prior incidents alluded to at the start of the case and multiple complaints from different tenants about the same incident.  

Tenant Satisfaction

Housemark™ introduced a very comprehensive Tenant Satisfaction survey many years ago which dealt with every aspect of the handling of an ASB Case.  When it was introduced, many of our customers implemented it. However, the passage of time has brought cuts in resources and experience showed that it was very difficult to get tenants to complete the questionnaire, and those who did complete, were often the least satisfied.  This needs to be reviewed in a realistic way and brought into the modern age.  For better or for worse – consumers are now used to giving a single star rating and free text comments, for any service they have received, no matter how complex that service was.

I became heavily involved in the collection and interpretation of satisfaction data – based on the Housemark™ Survey – for one of our customers.  There seemed to be inherent duplication within the carefully thought-out questionnaire. Once a tenant became dissatisfied, they would be inclined to score every one of the nuanced questions very low.  The profile of answers showed the exact opposite of the “bell shaped curve”, with results entirely at the extreme ends of the satisfaction scale.

With modern technology, it is possible to automatically send an SMS message to the complainant(s) in the case when the case is closed.  It is what people expect. The message can have a link to a web form allowing data to be securely collected and fed back into the ASB system to compare the service provided with the opinions expressed. A simple form is very easily completed on any mobile smart phone.  The main question should be a five-star statement about their overall opinion of the service and a free text box.  Only those tenants who fail to complete the web form, need be contacted directly by phone. 

What outcome do you want from these new measures?

It is worth thinking about your idea of “ideal statistics” which are going to be shown to your tenants and used in comparison with other landlords.

You do not want a “complaint count” which Tenants will ridicule at a Tenants Meeting and will only serve to persuade them that you are not treating their complaints seriously.  They will expect every complaint from every complainant to be counted, including complaints about ASB in communal areas, as these are visible to all. 

We all know that it is very difficult to achieve customer satisfaction on ASB.  Many tenants have unrealistic expectations that an offender will be speedily evicted, or that they, themselves, will be transferred to a “better area”.  One of our customers used to forestall poor final results by issuing surveys throughout the life of the case – “how are we doing…?”.  Those which were negative were followed up by a senior officer before issuing the final survey.  Errors and omissions were corrected, and the overall impression improved.  Sadly, that customer was merged into a larger organisation, the senior officer took early retirement, systems and procedures were standardised across the new Group, and we lost contact with them.

First to get off the mark

One of our London customers has been quick to get off the mark in seriously considering the issues.  In 2020, they introduced a new system of Key Performance Indicators and our company partnered with them training and re-training all Staff on the computer system.  A very significant improvement in measurable outcome was achieved.   In 2021, an independent consultant was called in to review the entire ASB service – including the computer system – and a lengthy list of recommendations has ensued.  My guess is that it will take the rest of 2022 to make final decisions on some of the issues raised and implement the necessary changes.  This means that the April 2023 deadline to start collecting data for the Social Housing Act will be upon us all too quickly and there really is no time to be lost!

Peter Hall, MA is Managing Director of HUBSolutions (www.hubsolutions.co.uk) which markets the Caseworks ASB system.

Prior to setting up the company, he was Assistant Director of Housing, London Borough of Hackney.