Summary of our approach to the 2024 Tenant Satisfaction Measures

WEST LANCASHIRE BOROUGH COUNCIL - TENANT SATISFACTION MEASURES SURVEY
(TSM) - SUMMARY OF APPROACH

METHODOLOGY

1 The survey was conducted by Information by Design (IbyD) on behalf of West Lancashire Borough Council (WLBC).

2 The methodology for data collection was to undertake a postal survey with a full census of all households (i.e. all households were included). This approach was chosen to ensure that every household had an equal chance of being included in the survey should they choose to participate. In addition, using a postal method ensures that delivery to all tenants is more secure, in comparison to online methods, where, for example, spam filters or volumes of emails can reduce the successful delivery rate. However, to reduce costs, tenants were given the option of returning the questionnaire online, with a prize draw incentive for doing so. As such, the survey used a consistent self-completion method which means that variation of responses due to response bias were minimised.

3 The primary data collection method was therefore a postal survey which was sent to all tenant households (a full census of households). Each tenant household received a letter and a copy of the questionnaire, with a reply-paid envelope to return the questionnaire to IbyD. The letter was addressed to all primary and joint tenants in the household.

4 Tenants were able to complete the survey by returning it by post, or by completing an online version. The postal questionnaire and letter contained a link and a QR code to the online survey, together with a unique code for tenants to use to access the online survey. The unique code enabled IbyD to identify the household that had completed the survey and to ensure that only one response was received per household.

5 A prize draw was offered to encourage tenants to complete the survey, with all respondents who completed the questionnaire given the option of entering. All respondents who entered the draw had the chance of winning one of five prizes of £100 shopping vouchers. An additional cash prize of £200 was offered to respondents who had completed the survey online and entered the draw.

6 The questionnaire was designed to include the 12 Tenant Satisfaction Measure questions (TP01 to TP12) using question wording, response options and order as specified in the regulator’s requirements. Two open-ended questions about what tenants thought WLBC were doing well and what they needed to improve as a landlord, and a section of demographic questions were also included in the questionnaire.

7 The postal questionnaires were sent out from 16th to 21st October 2024. The survey was closed on the 11th December and the small number of questionnaires returned by post after this date were not included in the results.

8 To ensure that the sample was representative of the population of tenants, targeted reminders were sent to selected groups of tenants who had not responded to the postal questionnaire to boost the response rate amongst these groups:

• Two reminder emails were sent to tenants living in General Needs Housing and in houses, flats or maisonettes in Skelmersdale North, Skelmersdale South and Tanhouse and Skelmersdale Town Centre wards on 22nd and 27th November.

• Three reminder emails were sent to tenants where the lead tenant was aged under
55 on 27th November, 2nd December and 7th December.

• An SMS reminder was sent to tenants where the lead tenant was aged under 55 on
5th December.

• The survey was also promoted by WLBC on social media.

SAMPLE
9 The target population was all tenant households living in the West Lancashire Borough Council management area. A secure file containing all primary and joint tenants was supplied to IbyD by WLBC containing 5,625 households.

10 A target sample of at least 543 households was set for the research, to achieve a confidence interval of ±4%. In total, the achieved sample was 961 respondents. 537 respondents completed the survey by post and 424 completed it online. The response rate (the proportion of tenants who completed the survey out of the total number of tenants included) was 17%.

11 As a point of reference, the overall confidence interval for this survey of 961 respondents is ±2.88%. Strictly speaking each question will differ as the confidence interval is also dependent on the individual responses to the question. In addition, the confidence interval is different when the data is analysed by subgroups as the number of tenants responding to that question is smaller than the total sample. In this report, the base sizes are given for each question underneath the relevant chart or section, or in the Appendix where indicated. Generally, confidence intervals are quoted in this report at the 95% level.

12 It should be noted that respondents were able to choose not to answer questions, and so the base size in some of the questions is smaller than 961.

13 In line with the regulator’s requirements, all questionnaires that include a response of “Very satisfied”, “Fairly satisfied”, “Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”, “Fairly dissatisfied” or “Very dissatisfied” (or the equivalent agreement responses) to at least one of the tenant perception survey questions have been included in the research. This means that some partially completed questionnaires have been included.

REPRESENTATIVENESS AND WEIGHTING
14 When the profile of the achieved survey sample was compared to the profile of the population, it was found that the following groups were under or over-represented in the sample:

• “General Needs” tenants (tenants living in housing that is not part of WLBC’s ‘Independent Living Scheme) were under-represented, and Category 11 and Category 2 tenants (tenants living in housing that is part of WLBC’s ‘Independent Living Scheme) were over-represented.

• Tenants living in bungalows and flats were over-represented and tenants living in houses were under-represented.

• Tenants living in 1 bedroomed properties were over-represented and tenants living in 3-bedroomed properties were under-represented.

• Tenants from Old Skelmersdale ward were over-represented and tenants from Skelmersdale South and Tanhouse and Skelmersdale Town Centre wards were under-represented.

• Tenants from the Northern Parishes and Ormskirk neighbourhoods were over-represented and tenants from Skelmersdale neighbourhood were under-represented.

15 The final dataset from the survey was weighted to ensure that it was representative of the population. It was found that weighting on Category (Category 1, Category 2 and General Needs) also corrected for a number of other differences between the profile of the survey sample and the population, so it was not necessary to weight on any additional variables. The tables below show the profile of the population compared to the unweighted and weighted survey sample.

Summary of Approach 2024 25 (PDF 121KB)