Knowing our Homes – initial proposals on collecting resident information

Today we're publishing a draft of the key pieces of information about residents we suggest social landlords collect to build up and/or maintain a good understanding of their residents. We are seeking our members’ feedback on these proposals by Thursday 28 March. 

Background

As part of the action plan we published together with the Chartered Institute for Housing (CIH) in response to the Better Social Housing Review, we have committed to a range of work to address the issues identified by the independent panel. One of the key recommendations is to improve how social housing providers collect and use data – both about the condition of the homes they manage and about who lives in them.

We are responding to this recommendation through a programme of work called Knowing our Homes. We are developing this work in close collaboration with housing associations, through a core task and finish group and through engagement with a broad range of NHF member groups, and with representatives of stock-holding local authorities and ALMOs. A key aim for this piece of work is to support social landlords to meet upcoming regulatory requirements.

One of the outputs we aim to develop through Knowing our Homes is an agreed set of information it would be beneficial for landlords to collect about their residents. The new draft Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard that the Regulator of Social Housing consulted on in 2023 underlines the importance of registered providers being able to use relevant information and data about their tenants, particularly in relation to delivering services and to communications.

In addition to this, the Housing Ombudsman’s January 2024 report Spotlight on attitudes, respect and rights highlights the importance of understanding residents’ circumstances and needs, in particular in relation to ensuring the most vulnerable residents are not left behind.

Following a survey of our members’ current practices in collecting and using data about their homes and residents, the document downloadable below provides a draft of the key pieces of information about residents we suggest social landlords collect to build up and/or maintain a good understanding of their residents. We reference key regulatory and statutory requirements – including the new Consumer Standards, the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, COntinuous REcording of Lettings and Sales in Social Housing in England data (CORE) data from new lettings, and social landlords’ duties under the Equality Act 2010.

We have developed our draft proposals by reviewing relevant regulatory and statutory requirements for social landlords, and through consultation with the Knowing our Homes task and finish group, with additional input from some members of the NHF’s Customer Experience and Housing Management Group. We have considered initial feedback from NHF member groups focused on equality, diversity and inclusion.

We have considered residents’ views about landlords collecting their information, through sessions with the NHF’s Tenants Advisory Panel and TPAS’ National Scrutiny Club.

Knowing our Homes is an ongoing project, and this document represents our thinking to date. We very much welcome feedback from our members on the approach we propose here, and will take comments into consideration as we develop our thinking. We will also review our proposals once confirmed details of the new Consumer Standards are published.

Summary

From April 2024, social landlords will be required to meet new consumer standards and show that alongside delivering good quality and safe homes, they are delivering good quality services that meet residents’ needs. To both enable and demonstrate this, it is important that landlords hold good quality information about residents, and that they use this information to shape how they deliver their services.

In this document, we identify information about residents that we believe would be useful for all social landlords to collect, for use in supporting them to deliver effective services that meet the diverse needs of their residents. Alongside this, landlords will need to make their own, individual assessment of what information about their residents they need to ensure they are delivering effective services.

The table below gives an overview of the key data points we propose social landlords should collect about their tenants, and in some cases on the other residents who are not named on the tenancy. We have given very broad suggestions for how these data could be used to help landlords equitably deliver effective services that meet residents’ needs as this is line with the new draft consumer standards. However, individual landlords should also make their own assessment of how they can best use this information.

Landlords should also aim to keep an up to date record of the number of residents living in each of their properties, so that they can take steps to address concerns resulting from overcrowding.

We are not suggesting that these are the only pieces of information landlords would want to know about their residents to inform the delivery of services. The approach we have proposed here is based on feedback on the importance of balancing the gathering of information about residents against the need to respect tenants and residents privacy, and well as considering GDPR requirements.

Alongside these data, individual landlords may collect other information about residents to help them to better tailor services to meet residents’ needs.

Log in to download the full report.