Next National Housing Customer Satisfaction Survey delayed to allow analysis of individual reports.
Top homebuilders' customer service is to come under scrutiny again as the second National Housing Customer Satisfaction Survey will take place this year, with the promise that it will be even more comprehensive than before. But its results will not be announced until February 2002, 16 months after the first survey was published.

The extended timetable will give homebuilders more time to analyse their individual reports from the original survey, which homebuilders should receive by the end of February, according to industry improvement organisation, the Housing Forum, that commissioned the survey.

The survey will cover homes legally completed between April 2000 and June 2001, and will be carried out in the autumn by MORI. Home sales data will again be provided by Zurich and the NHBC.

According to Housing Forum project manager Mehban Chowdrey the next survey will be more comprehensive than the original, which measured customer satisfaction with a hotel-style star rating system. "The reporting system had to be set up from scratch last year and over 10 000 questionnaires analysed," says Chowdrey. "It was a learning curve, and we are building on that now." A cross-industry working party headed by Westbury Homes chief executive Martin Donohue will be looking at feedback from the original survey to see how the next one can be improved. As well as homebuilders, representatives from the DETR and Consumers Association will sit on the working party and feedback will be sought from homebuilders and consumers.

Specific areas to be explored include the method of obtaining homebuyers' phone numbers to achieve a sufficient sample to allow ratings to be published - last year some homebuilders failed to secure any star ratings for this reason.

Further areas under consideration include the usefulness of the questionnaire and benchmarks, and the effective dissemination of the results to potential homebuyers. The working party will also review the star rating system.

The working group aims to find ways of speeding up delivery of individual reports to homebuilders to allow sufficient time for them to act on the findings and make relevant changes before the next survey.