Read how Midland Heart uses tenant insight to shape their repairs service across their 34,000 homes, 54 local authorities and 70,000 customers.

Each year we proactively engage with our tenants to understand what in our service we do well and where they feel we aren’t meeting their expectations. In 2023 we captured insights in the following ways:

• 1,110 perception surveys carried out
• 384 repairs related complaints reviewed
• 2,010 transactional surveys
• 86,667 calls made.

All of this work to capture tenant feedback on:

• Ease of reporting
• First time fix
• Speed of completion
• Quality of repair
• Communication around the repair
• Overall satisfaction
• Behaviour of the operative.

We share this with our service leads, as well as our involved tenants through our 'My Voice' framework.

Tenants use this feedback to hold us to account on our performance, undertake scrutiny reviews and commission additional projects to understand more about what tenants want. Examples include:

Tenant led assurance

Following a tenant-led review of the HOS Spotlight on Damp and Mould report, tenants are monitoring the completion of 32 actions to enhance our response to damp and mould.

Tenant scrutiny

Our 'My Scrutiny Group' are reviewing how well we keep tenants informed throughout their repairs journey.

Tenant insight

We ran eight focus groups relating to our repairs service, where 53 tenants shared their experiences of using our responsive repairs services.

Tenant voice

Over 400 tenants have fed back through local surveys, meetings and estate champion inspections around repairs to their home and communal areas.

Tenant influence

3,829 pieces of tenant insight directly influenced our new Tier 1 contract for repairs. We then received tenant-led assurance that we have listened and understood to what our tenants said and used this to shape our specification for tender.

We also undertake regular reviews of the experience of our services from different tenant groups. For example, a review of our damp and mould service showed that:

• 51 per cent of the total damp and mould complaint cases reported at stage 1 and 2, come from our ethnically diverse community, this is compared to an overall demographic of 36 per cent
• 46 per cent of the BME tenants reporting damp and mould live in properties that were constructed before 1920, meaning they are more likely to encounter damp and mould challenges due to the archetype and thermal efficiency of these aged properties.

We undertook a further review to ensure that we are proactively supporting ethnically diverse tenants:

• The average time taken to remediate damp and mould issues is equitable across the various demographics regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality or disability
• 53 per cent of pre-war homes that have benefitted from preventative investment are occupied by ethnically diverse tenants
• 45 per cent of tenants benefitting from preventative work are from an ethnically diverse background
• The workload of our customer liaison managers who support residents to eliminate damp and mould shows that 57 per cent of their casework is with ethnically diverse households.

As a result of this activity our tenants have had a real and meaningful influence on how we deliver our service:

Procurement

Changes made to our specification to include a standalone tenant liaison team as part of our new contractor’s offering, and the requirement for full integration with our core systems aiding communication and transparency.

Priority repairs team

Tenants told us they wanted quicker response times to reports of damp and mould so we introduced a brand new priority repairs team.

Their role is to tackle and prevent damp and mould quickly and effectively. They’re also on hand to give tenants advice about what can cause damp and mould.

Repairs communication

Tenants told us they want to know about our repairs performance but at the point in which it is relevant. As a result we developed our app functionality to provide an update on our repairs performance once a repair has been reported. Take up of this information has increased significantly as a result.

This new functionality has also provided the opportunity to enhance our communication around repairs, resulting in a 141 per cent increase in tenants engaging with our seasonal winter advice.

New repairs system

Following tenant feedback that follow-on appointments are often missed or delayed for jobs requiring multiple trades or visits, we have developed our new repair management system to offer functionality to book follow on appointments at the same time as the initial jobs.

Repairs online

Tenants helped to shape updates to our tenant app to enable them to report repairs. They helped to design and test new functionality as well as provide feedback on new functionality they would like to see.

Reducing the risk of damp and mould

We’ve been able to make changes to the way we prioritise homes for retrofit works following reports of damp and mould. We have also enhanced the support we provide to tenants when they experience damp and mould ensuring tenants who struggle to heat their homes are supported with fuel vouchers.