How your repairs service directly shapes TSM scores — and what to do about it.
From April 2023, the Regulator of Social Housing made Tenant Satisfaction Measures mandatory for all registered providers in England. TSMs are not a box-ticking exercise. They are a structured, standardised way of measuring how well landlords are doing across five themes — and repairs sits at the heart of three of them. If your TSM scores are disappointing, there is a strong chance your repairs service is the reason.
This article is written for housing association property managers, asset managers and repairs coordinators who want to understand the direct relationship between TSMs and repairs performance, and who need practical direction on where to focus. Whether you manage a small portfolio in West Yorkshire or a larger stock across the region, the principles are the same: faster, better-communicated repairs produce better scores, fewer complaints and a more defensible position with the regulator.
The Regulator of Social Housing requires providers to collect and submit data across two categories: tenant perception measures (gathered through surveys) and management information measures (drawn from your own operational data). There are 22 measures in total, split across themes including repairs, building safety, complaint handling, respectful and helpful engagement, and neighbourhood management.
The repairs-related perception measures ask tenants directly whether they are satisfied with the overall repairs service, whether their home is well-maintained, and whether their most recent repair was completed within an expected timeframe. The management information side includes the percentage of homes that do not meet the Decent Homes Standard and the number of non-emergency repairs completed within target timescale. Together, these measures create a comprehensive picture of whether your repairs function is genuinely delivering.
What makes tenant satisfaction measures different from previous performance frameworks is that tenants themselves provide the verdict. You can have internal KPIs that look acceptable and still score poorly on perception measures if the lived experience of getting a repair done does not match the data you are collecting. Closing the gap between operational performance and tenant perception is where the real work lies.
Repairs are the most frequent touchpoint a tenant has with their landlord. A tenant may go years without speaking to their housing officer, but they will contact the repairs line multiple times over the course of a tenancy. Each of those interactions — the ease of reporting, the communication while waiting, the quality of the work, the tidiness left behind — forms their overall impression of the organisation. That impression is what they reflect when a TSM surveyor asks whether they are satisfied with the repairs service.
Research consistently shows that the speed of response matters less than people assume. Tenants are often willing to wait a reasonable time for a non-emergency repair. What they find unacceptable is silence: not knowing when someone is coming, not being told if an appointment has changed, not being updated when a repair requires more than one visit. Communication failures translate directly into low perception scores even when the physical repair work is competent.
This has practical implications for how housing association maintenance contracts are structured and monitored. A contractor who completes repairs quickly but communicates poorly with tenants will damage your TSM scores. A contractor who sets realistic expectations, keeps tenants informed and leaves the property in good order will support strong scores even if their average completion time is slightly longer. Quality of experience is the metric that matters most in the perception data.
On the operational side, the two primary measures relating to repairs are the proportion of homes meeting the Decent Homes Standard and the percentage of non-emergency repairs completed within your published target timescale. Both are reported annually and published. Persistent underperformance on either will attract regulatory attention.
The Decent Homes Standard covers structural integrity, disrepair, modern facilities and thermal comfort. Failing this standard means tenants are living in substandard conditions, which creates both regulatory and reputational risk. Proactive planned maintenance — identifying and addressing issues before they become failures — is the only sustainable way to keep your stock compliant. Reactive-only maintenance strategies almost always result in a proportion of homes drifting out of compliance, particularly in older stock.
On completion within target timescale, the key issue for many providers is not the target itself but the measurement. If your works order system logs a job as complete when it is raised to a contractor rather than when the tenant confirms satisfaction, your internal data may look far better than reality. Auditing your data collection methodology is as important as improving your operational performance — both matter when you are reporting to the regulator.
Understanding which specific failures drive poor scores allows you to prioritise remediation. The most commonly reported problems across providers include:
Mapping your complaints data against these categories will quickly identify where your service is breaking down. TSM complaints measures also capture the number of complaints upheld — a high upheld rate on repairs complaints is a direct indicator of systemic failure rather than isolated incidents.
TSM data should feed directly into how you manage and review your maintenance contractors. If you are not using perception survey data and complaints data as part of your contractor performance reviews, you are missing the most important feedback available to you. Operational KPIs — completion times, van stock rates, appointment keeping — are necessary but not sufficient. You also need to know whether tenants who received a repair from a specific contractor felt the service was satisfactory.
Building this into your contract management means segmenting your survey data by contractor where possible, linking complaint records to the responsible contractor, and including perception-based measures in your contract KPIs alongside time-based ones. Contractors who do not accept this level of scrutiny are the wrong contractors for a TSM environment. The regulatory expectation is that providers can demonstrate how they are improving services based on tenant feedback — that requires contractors who are willing to be held accountable.
For housing association maintenance in Yorkshire, where many providers use a mix of direct labour and subcontracted trades, contractor accountability frameworks need to be consistent across both. Tenants do not distinguish between a directly employed operative and a subcontractor — the experience they report is the experience they had, regardless of who delivered it.
There is a temptation to treat TSMs as a communications problem — to focus on surveying more carefully, wording questions more favourably, or timing surveys to avoid periods of high complaint volume. This approach misses the point and will not produce sustainable improvement. TSM scores improve when the service improves. For repairs, that means investing in planned maintenance programmes that reduce reactive demand.
When reactive repair volumes are high, response times suffer, first-time fix rates fall and tenant communication becomes harder to manage. Planned maintenance — cyclical servicing, component replacements before failure, void property refurbishment to a consistent standard — reduces the volume of reactive work landing on your repairs team and gives tenants fewer reasons to contact you with problems. Fewer reactive contacts means each interaction can be managed better, and tenants experience the landlord as organised and proactive rather than reactive and slow.
Asset managers working to a stock condition survey programme should be mapping their planned work directly against TSM scores by neighbourhood or scheme. Properties in areas with low TSM scores often correlate with stock that has deferred maintenance backlogs. Addressing those backlogs systematically is both a TSM intervention and a long-term asset management strategy.
If you are looking for immediate actions your repairs team can take, the following will have the most direct impact on your TSMs and repairs performance:
Gebai Property Services is a Leeds-based commercial property maintenance contractor working with housing associations across Yorkshire and the wider region. We understand the TSM environment and the pressure it places on repairs teams — not just to complete jobs, but to deliver experiences that tenants are willing to report positively. That distinction shapes how we operate.
Our approach to housing association maintenance in Leeds and Yorkshire is built around transparency and accountability. We provide clear appointment confirmations, proactive communication on delays, tidy working practices and documented job completion. Where housing associations ask us to support post-repair contact or tenant satisfaction processes, we build that into our workflow. We are not a contractor that resists scrutiny — we expect to be measured and we welcome performance conversations.
We work across reactive repairs, planned maintenance programmes and void property refurbishment. For asset managers looking to address deferred maintenance backlogs that are affecting TSM scores in specific areas of their stock, we can mobilise quickly and work to the scope and timescales your programme requires. For repairs coordinators who need a reliable contractor that will not let appointments down or leave properties in poor condition, we deliver the kind of service that tenants are willing to endorse in a survey.
If your TSM scores are under pressure and you believe your repairs service is a contributing factor, we are happy to have a direct conversation about what is happening and where we might be able to help. Contact the Gebai team to discuss your requirements.
If your TSM scores are under pressure, your repairs service is the place to start. Contact Gebai to discuss a maintenance partnership built around tenant satisfaction and regulatory accountability.
We are always open to discussing new contracts, framework agreements and long-term partnerships with housing associations, developers and property managers.