Satisfaction among Leeds council house tenants falls sharply amid heating and insulation concerns

Sixty per cent of those asked said they were satisfied “overall” with the housing service offered by Leeds City Council, down from 77 per cent back in 2018, when the last such survey was carried out. There were similar drops across a range of other measures according to the results, which have been published on the local authority’s website.

Just 53 per cent said their heating and insulation was adequate during the winter, compared to 66 per cent five years ago. Satisfaction with the council’s complaint handling also dropped by 16 percentage points, while there was a 14 per cent fall in satisfaction with how anti-social behaviour on estates is addressed.

A report accompanying the findings said tenants living in high rise flats “were less likely to say their heating and insulation is good”. It also said disabled tenants were “less satisfied in general”, with this group “much less likely to have internet access or be positive about their current financial situation or the ease of affording energy bills”.

Responding in a detailed statement about the findings, the council said the decline in satisfaction was “in line with the wider social housing context” post-Covid. It said social landlords across the country were grappling with “labour shortages, the supply of building materials and catching up with routine works due to lack of access to properties throughout the pandemic”.

A spokesperson for the local authority added: “We take this feedback very seriously and have implemented a number of action plans to ensure that there is an improvement in service quality and customer satisfaction, including actions to improve the quality and timeliness of the repairs service, our response to damp and mould reports and to ensure that customers are able to contact us easily to raise an issue.”

The council also said that overall satisfaction had risen since the survey was completed, with a new and improved figure of 63 per cent emerging since the start of the new financial year in April.