The Landlord Services Manager introduced the report and said that the Council was working more closely with tenants than ever before.  He said that the response rate was very low and both overall satisfaction and overall dissatisfaction were down slightly but within the confidence interval.  The STAR survey conformed to a standardised methodology that was used across the sector and enabled comparison.  The Council was also looking to hold appreciative inquiries involving recent users and complainants, as these had been used to improve processes in other services.  The Panel also heard that there had been a spike in demand for fencing repairs following bad weather which caused a national shortage of timber but there was no longer a backlog.

The Head of Housing and Property added that the results about listening and acting upon feedback were disappointing because the Council did do lots of in depth tenant involvement, drilled down into the drivers of satisfaction and acted on the feedback tenants provided.

In response to a question about whether tenants were offered feedback forms following repairs, the Panel heard that satisfaction from feedback forms was 95%.  The Panel commented that tenants they came across were generally happy and that within the data there were lots of positives.  The Panel suggested that the Council should release results data to local newsletters and through the Tenants in Touch magazine.

The Panel asked about the shifting of tenant services online and heard that the Tenant Portal had been launched last year but that channel shift would be a slow process given that half of tenant households included at least one person over the age of 65.