Summary of results

Profile of sample
40% of respondents are nurses and one in four (25%) are doctors. Examples of 'other' occupations include porters, laboratory technicians, clerical staff and radiographers. The majority of respondents told us they occupied single rooms with shared facilities. Two-thirds of all respondents were residents in our Oxford sites.

Overall satisfaction
69% of residents expressed satisfaction with the overall service provided by A2 Housing Group. This is a good improvement on 63% in 2005. Doctors were the least satisfied occupational sub group in 2005 and this is still the case in 2006. However, results show that doctors satisfaction ratings across all sites has risen by 16 percentage points since 2005. This could be partly apportioned to the fact that almost one in three (31%) of all respondent doctors across all sites now live in Randolph Court which is fully BMA compliant.

Comparing results, old and new homes
Overall, residents' are far more satisfied with their new homes than their old homes. Most impressively, satisfaction levels have more than doubled with regard to bathrooms, toilets and kitchens.

The decant process
The responses from residents are generally good or fair with regard to moving blocks. For instance, 91% of residents regarded the organisation as good or fair and 93% regarded the communications as good or fair.
Across all sites, just over one in four residents (27%) have at some stage been involved in the decant process. There is no significant difference in satisfaction between respondents who had and had not been decanted.

Rent representing value for money
Residents who had been decanted showed no statistically significant difference in their perception of the rent as value for money between their old room and their new room. There was no difference in the perception of the rent as value for money between residents who had and had not been decanted. This supports the suggestion that residents are happy to pay a little extra for the improved services and facilities following refurbishment.

Residents current homes
70% of residents are happy with their room size. However areas of concern are the heating systems, internet and phone access. One in three residents said that they felt 'very unhappy' (the lowest possible rating) with internet access.

Satisfaction with services available to residents.
Encouragingly 89% were happy with the service received from staff when visiting the accommodation office, an increase of 12% on the previous key worker survey. Satisfaction levels with services available to residents are promising. 65% of residents expressed satisfaction with the rubbish area, 59% were happy with safety and security systems, 64% were satisfied with rubbish collection, and 63% were satisfied with external lighting. The areas of most concern to residents were car parking and the repairs and maintenance service.
Only 50% of residents were satisfied with car parking provision across all sites. However it should be noted that this is a good improvement on 33% last year and this can be apportioned to the improvements that were implemented particularly at the Royal Surrey and the Churchill Hospital site. 45% were satisfied with the phone systems and only 23% were satisfied with internet access. Improvements have been made since the 2005 survey and the improvement in satisfaction levels are testament to this. However, figures are still low, and therefore these are three areas that could be improved still further in the future.

Communications
Communication was also viewed favourably by residents, with 87% stating A2 was good at keeping them informed. Only 2% expressed overall dissatisfaction with this element of our service.
Just over 3 in 4 residents have contacted us since moving in. Of these residents, the method used to last contact us was predominantly visiting the accommodation office (72%) and phoning (35%).
Most significantly, no respondents used email to last contact A2. 63% of residents who had contacted us had done so to report a repair. 20% had a question concerning rent. Major works and communal area cleaning queries each accounted for 3% of previous contact with us.

Tenant involvement
Interest in getting involved in residents groups was low with 74% of respondents not even interested in being involved in their local residents association. 3% of respondents said they were already involved.

Conclusion
Overall, tenants express good levels of satisfaction with the range of services they receive from A2 and with many aspects of their homes. However there are clear areas where A2 Housing Group is not performing as well and if tackled satisfaction should increase in future surveys.

As response rates were low (21%) and have been at a similar level in previous surveys, focus groups, text messaging, door knocking and the use of different incentives are all alternative ways of measuring satisfaction that should be considered for future surveys.

To find out what we have done with these results, see our 'you said we did' section.