Confidence in housing association slumps

TENANTS in Glasgow have made their feelings known after customer confidence in a city housing provider showed a fall.

Maryhill Housing Association admitted this week the results of its three-yearly customer service survey was “disappointing”.

The biggest fall was in tenant satisfaction over repairs, with the association blaming the pandemic and a change of contractor as the reason behind the decrease.

It admitted that customer satisfaction had “gone down in most areas since 2018 but particularly around our repair service” and said it was working to address this.

A spokesperson said: “We are nevertheless disappointed that customer satisfaction has reduced since 2018 and are committed to doing all we can to ensure our customers receive an excellent quality of service from us.

“Our Customer Satisfaction Survey highlighted that the biggest reduction in satisfaction related to repairs.

“This was regrettably due to coronavirus restrictions prohibiting all but emergency repairs for a significant period of time. We were also required to introduce a new repairs contractor at the height of lockdown which led to some service disruption for customers.”

All social housing landlords are required to undertake a customer service survey usually every three years to assess what tenants think of their landlord’s performance.

It is undertaken independently by a survey organisation with the findings reported to the Scottish Housing Regulator which monitors the performance of housing providers and protects tenants’ rights.

The findings of the most recent survey – which received responses from 1124 tenants compared to 892 in 2018 – found that satisfaction with the overall service was 73.6% compared to 80% last time.

Satisfaction with being kept informed, opportunities to participate in decision-making, whether rent was good value and satisfaction with the quality of a home all showed a fall. But it was repairs which showed the most dramatic reverse – down from 80% three years ago to 71.3%.

Maryhill Housing Association, like many others, also offers a factoring service to home owners. Satisfaction among owners remained unchanged at 52%. Maryhill Housing Association owns and manages just over 3000 homes in the Maryhill and Ruchill areas.