Satisfaction among tenants has fallen in Brighton and Hove

A survey commissioned by Brighton and Hove City Council asked a random sample of 1,000 people living in council housing for their views on matters such as value for money, overall quality and repairs.

The study, in November and December 2021, revealed that overall satisfaction levels with housing services had dropped.

Each category was above the minimum benchmark but four of the nine categories showed a decline in satisfaction, while none saw any improvement in satisfaction since 2019.

The council commissions the survey every two years

The council passed on every benchmark set, apart from the "last completed repair" category.

A council spokesman said many areas of housing services have been affected by the Covid pandemic causing staff shortages and supply issues.

He said many other local authorities faced similar issues last year but the priority now was to “catch up” on all outstanding jobs.

The spokesman said: “We’re always looking to improve our customer services across council services. In our housing service, we carry out the survey of tenants and residents (Star) every two years to check tenants’ satisfaction to see what’s going well and what areas need improvement.

From left, councillors Anne Meadows, Mary Mears and Dawn Barnett discussed empty council houses in Hangleton last year

“Many areas have been affected by the Covid pandemic over the past two years while we redirected our services to focus on emergency support and struggled with staff shortages and supply issues. The Star survey is benchmarked against other similar local authorities and many are facing similar issues.”

The Argus reported in December last year on the waiting list of 8,801 repairs in council houses, with 284 sitting empty December which meant the council was losing £305 a month from each house.

The council will be reintroducing full opening hours of its housing customer service line from June 29.

A garden of a previously empty house in Hangleton

The spokesman added: “Covid has had a particular impact on our council housing repairs service where we’ve had to follow national social distancing guidance on accessing people’s homes and focused on urgent and emergency repairs.

“Since returning to a more usual working environment, our priority is to catch up all outstanding jobs. We’ve also now restarted our programme investing in improving people’s homes, including fitting solar panels which will help residents reduce their bills in the face of the cost of living crisis.

“We’d like to thank residents for their patience and understanding while we get all our services back on track.”

The results from the survey of 1,000 people in the city

Conservative housing spokeswoman Councillor Anne Meadows said the declining satisfaction could be linked with council offices being closed.

She said: “The in-house repairs service should have done better.  So many repairs are pending and there is a backlog on repairs that tenants are not happy. This could have been dealt with better, even with Covid. Repairs could have been carried out in empty properties so that they came on line immediately Covid was over.

“Tenants had told me it was so difficult to get hold of anyone and this is the factor of working from home - it still is.

“This survey shows that tenants are not being listened to whether they phone about repairs or anything else. The council have stopped listening and caring about them.

“The council needs to provide a timeline with a date to aim for to catch up with all those outstanding repairs.”