New Homes Tenant Survey Form - Stanmore - New Queens Gate

We asked our tenants who had been allocated a home in our new council house developments in New Queen's gate, Stanmore to complete our survey, which would provide feedback on the internal and external features of their homes as well as questions about their neighbourhood and level of service WCC provided as their landlord.

Of the 21 households that were sent a questionnaire, 17 returned a completed questionnaire, giving a response rate of 81%.

The Key messages that have emerged from the consultation are:

• Overall satisfaction with the quality of their home scored very highly with 94% of the respondents stating they were either ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Very satisfied’ with the quality of their home.
•  Internal features were generally well received, with only one or two people reporting levels of dissatisfaction.  The issue of greatest concern was clothes drying space but it was not sufficient to warrant further investigation at this time.
• The external areas caused more concern so this will be factored into the design process for future schemes.The biggest area of concern was ‘Maintenance of outside areas (33% satisfaction), with front gardens (42%) also scoring lower than most.
• The majority of respondents were happy with Winchester City Council as a landlord. They were less happy with the follow up visit they received and there was one tenant who was unhappy with many aspects of their home, so this will be taken up individually with that person.
• Overall 16 out of the 17 respondents were either ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Very satisfied’ with their neighbourhood as a place to live.

The results will be aggregated with similar feedback from other new schemes to help identify any recurring themes to further inform our future programme of work. 

Actions undertaken

• The design process for future schemes should give greater weight to the extent, quality and maintenance of outside areas. Specific elements are being added to the Employer’s Requirements (ERs) and/or design process as appropriate.

• The design process for future schemes will involve other Housing teams at the earliest possible stage to ensure a fully joined-up approach from the outset. Design meetings have been established to formalise the agreement and sign-off of schemes by relevant teams and will form part of the highlight reporting.

• Officers from Housing Management contacted the dissatisfied tenant and discovered there were wider issues to be resolved. The tenant never actually wanted to live in Winchester and has since relocated to another area.

• The new Housing Project Managers – New Homes and Neighbourhoods are reviewing the effectiveness of the whole regime of follow-up visits.

• Officers from the New Homes Team contacted the tenant about the issue with soil which wasn’t adequately addressed. The tenant has resolved the issue through their own actions since the survey and is now happy with their garden.