My RHA
We can get satisfaction
6th July 2021 | posted in News
Like all housing associations, we carry out major resident satisfaction surveys to establish what our residents think of the service we provide.
The last one was carried out in 2018.
Do you remember 2018?
It was the year England were beaten on penalties by Croatia in the World Cup Semi-Final (but it’s coming home this year, isn’t it?), we sweltered in the joint hottest summer on record and Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest at the Government’s approach to Brexit (whatever happened to him and that?).
It was also a time that a global pandemic would have been unthinkable.
So much has changed since then, so it was a little trepidation that we undertook our 2021 resident satisfaction survey.
After all, given the last 15 months, it would have been understandable for people not to be feeling at their most positive when it came to taking part in a survey.
It was therefore pleasing when the results came in and we discovered that despite everything they have been through in 2020 and 2021, our residents are still clearly happy with the service they receive from us.
The highlight figure was an overall satisfaction rate of 89%. That’s 9 out of 10 people who said they were happy with the overall service we provide. The same figure applied to the quality of people’s homes, and it was even higher when they were asked what they thought about their neighbourhood as a place to live (93%) and if they felt they get value for money (94%).
When combining all criteria, satisfaction overall was 4% above average when compared to other housing associations and in some areas, such as neighbourhood, Railway Housing Association was ranked 26% higher than others, so global pandemic, or no global pandemic, we have to be happy with that.
We are not perfect, of course, and there are areas identified by residents which we need to work on, particularly around communication and information and day-to-day repairs, although the latter has been more difficult due to the restrictions around Covid-19, particularly during the first lockdown when we were only permitted to carry out emergency repairs.
Surveys like this also throw up some useful, and often surprising, information and this one was no different, with almost 50% of the people questioned saying they have never used the internet. This underlines the importance of ensuring we use all forms of communication when it comes to the people who live in our homes.
I wonder what the survey will look like in 2024 and what will have happened between now and then? After the last three years, who knows!!!
