News28.07.23by Grainne CuffeSocial landlords in London will need to replace one in five staff members this year if the current turnover rate continues, according to new data from Housemark.The voluntary turnover rate at London landlords is twice the national average (picture: Alamy)SharelinesSocial landlords in London will need to replace one in five staff members this year if the current turnover rate continues, according to new data from Housemark #UKhousing The consultancy’s data for the first quarter of 2023-24, which is based on 200 councils and housing associations, showed that London landlords are seeing almost double the voluntary turnover rate for housing staff compared with the national average.
If the trend continues, one in five housing employees in the capital could leave over the course of this year.
Overall, Jonathan Cox, director of data Housemark, said: “Housemark’s monthly data on staff attrition shows that in the first quarter of 2023-24, 2.6% of housing workers voluntarily left their organisation – an effective annual voluntary turnover rate of 10.4%.
“If this trend continues, over one in 10 staff can be expected to leave their employer over the course of this year.” Mr Cox said the data revealed a slight improvement on the levels of voluntary staff turnover seen during the height of the ‘great resignation’ (13%), but remains significantly higher than the pre-pandemic average of 8%.
“Voluntary turnover in London was almost double the national average in the first quarter – meaning one in five housing employees in the capital could leave over the course of this year.
“Landlords with a higher proportion of customer facing staff reported higher levels of voluntary staff turnover – for example, care workers, maintenance operatives and call agents are significantly more likely to change employer,” he explained.
The details come after an Inside Housing investigation found that the average turnover councils nearly doubled from 4.5% in 2017 to 9.8% in 2022.
Housing officers said they are under significant pressure without the proper support and resources.
Elsewhere, the data firm found that overall satisfaction – based on tenant satisfaction measures perception surveys for landlords that carry out a tracker survey – has fallen on average 6.5 percentage points compared with the same period last year, from 79.5% in June 2022 to 73% in June 2023. There are some landlords which bucked this trend, but these landlords had typically also improved performance on repairs volumes and contact centre wait-times, Mr Cox said.
The data found that a close relationship between shorter call wait times and tenant satisfaction.
Last year, landlords that reported average call wait times of under 100 seconds had an average overall satisfaction score of 81%. This fell to just 72% for landlords with call wait times of over 300 seconds.
Repairs volumes are up, but have not yet not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, while landlords with higher volumes completed are reporting better overall perception.
In the first quarter of this year, landlords that completed fewer than 250 repairs per 1,000 properties reported an average overall perception score of 72.5%, compared with 77.4% for landlords that completed more.
Voids performance is still struggling, with vacancy rates up on the previous quarter and average re-let times above 44 days.
Sign up for our daily newsletter
