As an organisation that specialises in resident satisfaction surveys and benchmarking data, we naturally have an interest in the White Paper’s proposed dashboard of consumer metrics.

It’s also important that we give our customers the best possible advice as they consider the White Paper’s implications. Like you, we are considering what action we need to take now and what needs to wait until more detail emerges.

We see the White Paper as a set of principles, aims and ideas. Much time and effort, over years rather than months, will be required to crystalise the detail and specifics, including finalising the metrics that are to feature in the new regulatory suite of performance indicators (a mix of existing and new satisfaction metrics and performance indicators).

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is alive to the fact that some of the new metrics are very much a work in progress and that the RSH will need the sector’s considered input to get them right.

As all the suggested metrics have draft status and may change, and some of the new ones are problematic as they stand, we strongly recommend that you do not adopt the new ones in your surveys.

However, you might want to reflect the White Paper’s themes and general direction of travel as part of your preparations to better align to what is likely to be major change for the sector, eg to see how you measure up on complaints handling or to gather intelligence on tenant priorities.

If this is the case, we would be delighted to discuss how your satisfaction survey can help you stay ahead of the game and proactively manage your approach to consumer regulation.

When the metrics are finalised, we can drop them in the satisfaction surveys we undertake for you and reflect them in our benchmarking data collection and reporting. Indeed, in terms of the latter, we are looking to provide benchmarking members with a flexible public-facing consumer dashboard that you can shape around the finalised regulatory metrics, together with your own metrics that reflect your tenants’ priorities.

As always, we want to hear your ideas about how we can better support you meet the challenges ahead.