Your feedback

Tenants, landlords and other stakeholders have shown their broad support for the Tenant Services Authority’s proposed regulatory approach and standards for landlords.

We received over 700 responses to our discussion paper on the draft standards that will apply to landlords from April 2010. These standards aim to improve services to tenants. The discussion paper was the main element of the second phase of our National Conversation.

Read a summary of the responses to our discussion paper or read the responses themselves.

The discussion paper is available as both a summary and a full version.

The responses we received to the discussion paper are now being used to influence the design of our new regulatory standards. They build on the 27,000 responses to the first phase of the National Conversation, which took place earlier this year.

You can still read the  executive summary, the summary or the full report from the first phase of the National Conversation.

This first phase of the National Conversation took place between January and March 2009. Tenants and landlords got involved in a variety of ways. We spoke to tenants in their own homes, tenants and landlords came to regional events we organised, filmed voxpops on our touring camper van, and filled in our questionnaire by post or online. We heard from around 30,000 people in total.

What tenants told us
The tenants who took part in the first phase of the National Conversation listed repairs and maintenance, ensuring homes are up to date and in a decent condition, tackling anti-social behaviour and being consulted with by their landlords as their top priorities.

The main findings include:

•    81% of tenants listed repairs and maintenance as the top issue that they expected their landlord to get right. This was followed by 39% for health and safety, 37% for security in their neighbourhood, 24% for keeping tenants informed, and 23% for dealing with complaints
•    77% of tenants say they’re satisfied with their landlords. Of this, 32% are very satisfied, while 45% are fairly satisfied. A quarter are not satisfied at all
•    tenants consider choice most important for repairs and maintenance (77%) and design of their home (46%)

This feedback will go towards developing new standards to improve services for tenants and inform the future of social housing.

More detailed information about what tenants, shared owners and landlords told us is available in the reports on our findings.

Read a short executive summary, the summary or the full report of what you told us.

The third and final stage of the National Conversation is due to start in November. That’s when we’ll publish what you told us during the summer. We’ll also publish our revised proposals for landlord standards and ask for your help in checking that we’ve got the wording exactly right, so that you can be sure you get excellent service from your landlord in future.

A second phase followed between June and September, where we asked for comments on our initial thoughts on our regulatory standards. We received over 850 responses from tenants, landlords and stakeholders. We have published the first set of these and more will follow shortly. A report on the feedback will also be published in October, followed by our statutory consultation on the standards framework in November.