Council redesign housing management service over 'unacceptable trend'
Kirklees Council is redesigning its housing management and partnership service after an “unacceptable trend” emerged around tenant satisfaction.
The service is responsible for the delivery of landlord functions to 21,500 council tenancies, a report to a meeting of the council’s growth and regeneration scrutiny panel explains.
It includes around 250 members of staff working on a wide range of areas, including neighbourhood management, retirement living, caretaking and empty homes.
Last year, the regulator for social housing brought in four consumer standards that the council must comply with, as well as 22 tenant satisfaction measures.
According to the survey, tenant satisfaction fell between 23/24 and 24/25 – which was described as an “unacceptable trend” by cabinet member for Housing and Transport, Coun Moses Crook.
In the meeting’s report, the council recognised it is “failing to meet the expectations” of its tenants and says that a service redesign is necessary to improve the services.
However, recent efforts appear to be paying off with mid-year analysis for 25/26 showing an increase in every one of the 12 tenant satisfaction measures, with 11 out of 12 better than the results obtained in 23/24.
Councillor Crook added: “We’re not yet performing as well as we would like but the work done to date has reversed the trend that we had seen and we are starting to see signs of recovery and an increase in confidence and satisfaction from our tenants.”
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