6 Challenges Facing Social Housing Association Landlords

Content:

1. Providing a great tenant experience

2. An increasing number of mergers

3. Damp and mould

4. Greater scrutiny

5. Communication

6. Data management

7. Improve Your Tenant Experience with EVO

The housing sector has come under huge scrutiny since the Grenfell Tower disaster - and for good reason.

Stories of social housing providers failing to provide adequate housing and services to residents have left many people living in unacceptable conditions.

Most housing providers are in a difficult situation. Repair request backlogs from the COVID-19 pandemic still haven’t been dealt with and costs are increasing. 

On top of that, most housing association tenants’ expectations of their social housing landlords have increased. 

As a result, the number of complaints escalated to the Housing Ombudsman in the last year, hitting an all-time high of 5,109. And that’s just the ones that reached the Housing Ombudsman. The total number of complaints received by landlords is likely to be much higher. 

The government has commissioned reports, white papers and investigations that aim to understand the sector’s difficulties. New laws and regulatory requirements have been introduced in response.

These new laws pave the way for better housing in the UK. But improving the social housing sector is complex, and additional laws may present more challenges to a sector already under pressure. 

This article discusses several challenges facing social housing landlords. We’ll look at the associated laws and required reporting and how some of these problems can be solved.

1. Providing a great tenant experience

The Social Housing (Regulation) Act came into force in July 2023. Under the law, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) gained new powers.

The regulator now requires all social housing providers to conduct and publish surveys on tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs).

The aim is to improve social housing standards by assessing the services and homes landlords provide. This will allow:

• Residents to see how well their landlord is doing and hold them to account.

• Help RSH understand which registered social landlords need to make improvements.
  
  

These surveys cover 22 areas, across five main themes:

• Repairs.

• Building safety.

• Complaint-handling.

• Respectful and helpful tenant engagement.

• Responsible neighbourhood management.
  
  

Surveys can be carried out over any communication channel and must be:

• Clear and easy for residents to answer.

• Performed at least once per year for providers with over 1,000 properties

• Performed once every two years for providers with less than 1,000 properties. 

• Be representative of the resident population.

• Based on perception, not how well a service they recently used was delivered. 
  
  

Every household should only be surveyed once. 

Registered social landlords must submit their first year of TSM survey data by summer 2024. These will be published by RSH in the autumn of the same year. Social landlords must also share their results with their residents. 

Preliminary research from housing data provider Housemark suggests that initial results may be poor overall.

It reports that social housing tenant satisfaction has dropped by five percentage points to 79% in the last three years. 

Complaint handling stood out as being the biggest problem among the five themes, with only 56% of social housing association tenants satisfied in this respect. 

What should social housing associations do?

Most large social housing providers already perform tenant satisfaction surveys. 

However, they will still need to adjust their processes to meet the new rules. So what should new survey methods look like?

A survey of social housing landlords by Inside Housing found that the majority of organisations are moving away from indirect methods like email or post and now prefer communicating by phone. 

Local authorities communication methods: 

Housing associations communication methods:

This is because phone communication is more direct and yields higher data collection rates. However, it’s important to also offer alternatives, as phone calls can exclude some people - for example, non-English speakers. 

So what about the frequency of surveys? 

Most landlords reported using either:

• A single survey per household each year.

• A tracker survey, where the same sample is sent the same questions at regular intervals. This allows improvements to be tracked.
  
  

Frequency of surveys, 2023-24

Source: Inside Housing

2. An increasing number of mergers

Social housing providers face a range of economic challenges. Cost of labour and materials has increased due to inflation, but at the same time rents have been capped. 

Some housing associations also face huge housing disrepair compensation bills. For example, Sheffield City Council recently reported that its bill for disrepair claims was £2,986,269.

Rising costs and flat revenues have led many housing associations to merge - either to enjoy better economies of scale or to take on bankrupt partners. 

There have been several examples this year. In February Sanctuary, already one of the UK’s largest social housing providers, took over Swan.

Swan has 11,000 properties and was suffering from financial and regulatory issues. 

These mergers present several challenges to social housing providers:

• Larger portfolios.

• Inheriting financial and organisational problems.

• Integrating management systems.

• Management and governance challenges. 
  
  

What should social housing associations do?

Speaking to socialhousing.co.uk, housing governance specialist Victoria Jardine had these tips for social housing landlords considering a merger:

✔️Ask if a merger is in the interests of your residents. Will it allow you to provide them with greater efficiency and better outcomes?

✔️Can you prove that you consulted your residents on a merger and that you considered their responses in your decision making?

✔️Get a detailed understanding of the stock you are acquiring. Decide how this will impact your finances and future business plan. If large-scale upgrades are required, can you secure funding for them?

✔️Confidentiality is key - avoid any news of a potential merger leaking out. 

✔️Ask if your board has the capacity to handle a merger while also running your existing portfolio.

✔️Consider what is best for both organisations - not just yours.

✔️Perform robust due diligence - try to spot any potential regulatory issues at the other business. 

3. Damp and mould

Damp and mould is thought to affect around 150,000 households that rent from social housing landlords.

And some social housing providers are still failing to deal with it. Recently, Hyde Council was given a maladministration order after an elderly resident with a heart condition had to wait 18 months for a damp and mould issue in her home to be resolved. 

Damp and mould put residents' health and wellbeing at risk and no one should have to live with it. 

The good news is that most landlords deal with damp and mould swiftly and effectively. 

What should social housing associations do?

Earlier this year the Regulator of Social Housing launched a report on damp and mould in the social housing sector. The report’s findings highlight the key to properly dealing with damp and mould. 

It found that landlords that dealt with the problem effectively had:

• Good data management.

• Strong board oversight of the condition of their property portfolio.

• Specific processes for identifying and dealing with damp and mould. 
  
  

So what should these processes look like?

The easiest way to identify and deal with damp and mould is to carry out regular planned preventative maintenance (PPM). 

In other words, inspect your properties at least once per year and fix problems like damp and mould before they get worse. 

If you do spot damp and mould or a resident complains about it, then you should:

✔️Tell your resident how you intend to deal with the problem and when.

✔️Assess whether you are dealing with rising damp, penetrating damp or condensation.

✔️Hire a damp surveyor to inspect the property. 

✔️Follow the surveyor's recommendations to stop the causes of damp.

✔️Replace damaged materials.

4. Greater scrutiny

The decades leading up to the Grenfell Tower disaster saw the gradual deregulation of the social housing sector. The government wanted to encourage for-profit companies that would deliver the same services for a lower cost. 

With the social housing sector facing a number of issues, regulation is being tightened. As well as TSM surveys, the Social Housing (Regulation) Act has:

Strengthened the power of the RSH

RSH can now:

🔍Carry out Ofsted-style inspections on social landlords

🔍Order them to carry out emergency remedial work within a set timeframe

🔍Issue performance improvement plan notices

Given greater powers to the Housing Ombudsman 

The Housing Ombudsman can now order a landlord to evaluate its policies and practices to avoid service issues being repeated. 

These orders were recommendations in the past. However, now landlords have a duty to address them. 

The Ombudsman regularly publishes the results of its maladministration investigations, which are often picked up by the media. 

What should social housing associations do?

Greater regulation isn’t a problem if you comply with those regulations. 

So it’s more important than ever for landlords to provide decent-quality accommodation and have robust processes for dealing with tenant repairs and maintenance requests. 

You can increase accountability, transparency and efficiency by using an automated, centralised repairs and maintenance system like EVO’s.

Once each stage of a repair and maintenance request is completed, it is automatically passed on to the next responsible person in the process. 

Because the system is centralised, everyone can see what stage the repair is at.

5. Communication

Communication is key to a good relationship - both with residents and within a housing provider. 

In many cases, poor communication is one of the reasons tenants are left to put up with poor-quality housing.

Barriers to good communication are broad and include:

⚠️Repair requests getting lost between departments.

⚠️Not keeping residents updated on progress. 

⚠️Not letting residents choose their communication method. 

⚠️Lack of resident trust in the housing provider.

⚠️English not the residents first language.

⚠️Inability to communicate due to some form of impairment. 

⚠️Not including tenants in decision-making over their home and community.

What should social housing associations do?

A good first step to improve communication is to make it easy for residents to make repair and maintenance requests and be kept updated on their progress.

Unfortunately, many communication systems used by social housing providers are not resident-centric. They are designed around the organisation’s own systems.

At EVO, we provide an end-to-end digital platform that landlords can outsource all their repairs and maintenance to. 

We know that most people under 40 use mobile phone apps to manage everything in their lives. They expect to be able to manage their property repairs in the same way.

That’s why we provide a mobile phone app to the residents we work with. This allows them to:

✔️Report a problem.

✔️Set their appointments and track repair progress.

✔️Access important documents like their tenancy agreement and manuals for home appliances.

✔️Access property FAQs and how-to videos on common problems. 

✔️Report an emergency.

Best of all, they can still request repairs via phone or email if that’s what they prefer. 

6. Data management

The section on damp and mould above highlights data management as a deciding factor between those organisations that can deal with the problem effectively and those that can’t.

This was also highlighted in the post-Grenfell Hackitt Review. It found that many social housing providers didn’t have enough information on the level of risk posed by their buildings. 

Good data management supports quality housing in general, as well as healthy resident relationships.

What should social housing associations do?

What does good data management look like?

At the most basic level, it involves having comprehensive property information and job histories that can be accessed by whoever needs it. 

For example, if a manufacturer reports a safety issue on a boiler, the social housing landlord should be able to find out how many properties have one fitted. They can then also track how many have had this safety issue fixed. 

But harnessing data goes beyond this. It can also allow social housing providers to spot patterns and trends in their portfolio. This enables them to do two things:

• Identify the average time a boiler lasts before it needs replacing, and do so before this happens.

• Get a deeper understanding of their portfolio that enables better decision-making.
  
  

To achieve this, housing providers need to focus on three areas of their data management:

📊Centralise data: Social housing providers have multiple departments and contractors. Each collects their own data in silos. This makes it impossible for the housing provider to use. Good data management involves storing data from across the organisation in one place. 

📊Use built-for-purpose systems: Spreadsheets are not good platforms for collecting and storing data. Instead, use a purpose-built platform for collecting data. This makes collecting and analysing data quicker and more intuitive.

📊Comply with data protection rules: It’s vital that you comply with data protection laws like GDPR and keep any personal data safe. You’ll also need to ensure you get people’s permission to collect and store their data.

📊Give access to the right people: Give the right people access to the right data at the right time. This allows them to assess repair issues more accurately and prepare the right solution. For example, if a boiler needs repairing, allow your staff to access information on the type of boiler and its service history. 

📊Collect the right data: Information like property service history and information on its appliances, structure etc., can be used to make better decisions. They can also be used to spot trends and predict when preventative maintenance should be scheduled. 

Improve Your Tenant Experience with EVO

Three main problems are at the heart of most of the issues highlighted in this article. They are:

• Poor communication.

• Inefficient repair and maintenance processes.

• Poor data management.

A digital end-to-end solution for outsourcing repairs like EVO can help solve all three.

✔️Good communication: Residents can request repairs using a mobile phone app. They can send pictures and videos of the problem, so tradespeople can get an accurate picture of what has happened and the likely solution. Residents get regular updates on their repair.

✔️Efficient repairs: All repair requests are automatically assigned to the next available suitably qualified tradesperson. 

✔️Centralised data management: EVO allows registered social housing providers to collect, store and analyse data on their properties and their repair and maintenance projects in one place. This allows employees and tradespeople to access the information they need, when they need it. It also enables management to analyse data and trends to plan resources and make better decisions.

Contact us to find out how EVO can help solve the challenges your social housing organisation faces.