New guide for Scottish landlords carrying out surveys...

An updated guide that simplifies and clarifies some of the steps landlords north of the border should take when designing and carrying out surveys of their tenants and service users has been published by the Scottish Housing Regulator.

Designed to offer landlords greater flexibility in carrying out surveys, the new guidance recognises the differences in size and operating circumstances of landlords across Scotland.

The refreshed guide replaces its earlier guidance published in 2013, taking into account feedback the Regulator gathered from landlords through its routine regulatory work and views gathered through direct consultation with landlord representative bodies.

Christine Macleod, director of governance and performance, said: “We require landlords to survey their tenants and report to us their tenant satisfaction rates. This is an important indicator of the landlord’s performance. We need to be sure that landlords ask the same questions in the same way so we publish this survey guide to ensure consistency.

“In commissioning this refresh of the survey guide we were keen to reflect the experiences of landlords. So we asked Ipsos MORI to speak with a range of external stakeholders to help identify what needed to be changed in the guide to make it clearer for landlords while maintaining the robustness of the survey data that they gather.”

The Regulator uses results of landlords’ surveys gathered through landlords’ Annual Returns on the Scottish Social Housing Charter to inform its regulatory activity and engagement.

The Regulator’s refreshed guide ‘Conducting surveys of tenants and service users: A Guide’ is available to view by click here, while you can also view a version which shows all of the changes.

Want to comment on this story? If so...if any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals on any basis, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.