At the same time, forum chief executive David Crewe had promised that the results of the second National Customer Satisfaction Survey of the private new homes sector will contain full sets of ratings for all homebuilders surveyed, with results being announced at the forum's next annual conference on 28 February 2002.
The forum is working closely with the Housing Corporation on the first ever National Tenant Satisfaction Survey and the objective is to carry out the first survey this summer. The survey would be targeted at tenants who have been living in new build or refurbished homes for a year, rented either from housing associations or local authorities. Questions would be similar to those posed in the private buyers' survey.
The second National Customer Satisfaction Survey covering the top private sector homebuilders will also take place this summer. As with the first survey, the forum has commissioned MORI to carry out telephone research of buyers, but a few significant changes are planned.
The first survey was criticised because the star-rating results, covering home quality and homebuilder service, were incomplete, MORI claiming that the numbers of buyers surveyed for some homebuilders were too small to enable it to give a rating. Fewer than half of the 59 homebuilders surveyed had a complete set of stars covering all seven categories and three companies had no ratings at all.
"We are committed this year to having no empty boxes," said Housing Forum chief executive David Crewe. There are also plans to give less emphasis to design in the next survey, as this is an area where homebuilders are all achieving near-maximum scores.
The results of the survey will be made public at the Housing Forum conference in London in February, which will be the forum's final event as the government-backed organisation is scheduled to come to the end of its life next year.
Source
Building Homes
