Data Disappears As Housing No Longer Compelled To Share Information

Prior to the abolition of the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) in March 2012, landlords in England submitted reams of data to the TSA and other government agencies. But, under the coalition government's system of light-touch regulation, they are no longer required to tell anyone but their tenants how effectively they carry out repairs or levels of overall satisfaction with their service. If they neglect to provide this information to tenants, it is unclear whether anyone would ever find out.  Roger Jarman, former head of housing at the Audit Commission, is concerned the absence of standardised data means tenants can no longer compare their landlord's performance with that of other providers. "Taking away the need for organisations to collect customer satisfaction statistics is retrograde," he says. "An excessive amount of data was collected [before], but getting rid of some performance data is not helpful for users."  Read more on the Guardian website.