Can You Predict Your C Rating?

Full Webinar Transcript

Sarah Wilson: Hopefully you're in the right place. Fingers crossed — can you pitch your C rating webinar? I'm super, super excited about this one. We've wanted to do it for a long time, and we've got such a great lineup. I was just thinking — we actually haven't done a webinar since January, which is the longest gap ever. So hopefully you've missed us. We're back with a stellar three-people lineup.

Do pop any questions in the chat. As we've got three speakers, if you have a question for a particular person, just name them so I can easily pick out who to ask. We're going to send the recording — everyone always asks. You'll get a full replay, slides and all the audio. And we're nice, so we send you a care package as well. You'll get that in the next few days after the webinar.

We absolutely love this being a dialogue, and I think some of the best conversations happen in the comments. Let me know what your questions are as we go through.

I'm going to try to go through my part as soon as possible so we can get to the good stuff. I'll be framing the puzzle, and then we've got the three lenses we're looking at this through, actions you can take today if you want to learn more and develop it a little bit further — and then we'll have that meaty bit of Q&A at the end. Hopefully that all sounds good for the next 55 minutes before your lunch break.

So I'm going to get cracking. We've got a packed agenda. The best way to start thinking about the question of "can data predict a C1?" is to ask: what is a C1? What does it actually mean?

When I was doing the research, I was quite surprised. You sort of think of C1 as very much an end goal, a finish line, a reward — the end of the process. But actually what I found is it's very much not. It's not perfect, it's not "you done". In the regulator's own language, it means reasonably competent, with assistance to catch and fix your own mistakes.

A few CEOs have been in the news the last few weeks talking about their C1. Greg Reed at Places for People, the largest housing association ever to be awarded a C1, calls it "not a job done". Glenn Harris at Midland Heart called it "a starting pistol, not a finish line". Glenn also says "every day we will let someone down" — and that's a C1 leader talking. So I found that quite surprising.

The question moves from "how do we get everything in order, how do we get perfection, how do we improve our metrics?" to something more like: do we have a system that captures what we get wrong — and can we prove it?

We're three years in now. Three years of judgments. Only about a quarter of landlords judged have achieved C1 — although from yesterday, that club has got quite a lot busier. In April there was one C1 awarded — to the Guinness Partnership. Well done Chris and the team. Guinness is a very old Wordnerds friend, so we're really chuffed with the team there. And then yesterday there was four new C1s: Stockport Council, Hammersmith and Fulham Council, Housing 21, and also Golden Lane Housing.

Guinness actually co-designed some of the Wordnerds housing-specific frameworks, and they've landed that brilliant rating. So the first thing to be thinking about is taking a qual, quant, and then action approach to your feedback. It really isn't theoretical — it's very much about what you can be doing practically, and that does help to drive that higher level.

I looked at the language in some of those new judgments, and the same things keep showing up: co-produced, co-designed, clearly evidenced, tenant feedback has directly impacted service delivery. Hammersmith and Fulham co-produced a repairs-contractors customer charter with tenants. Stockport tenants shaped a new customer experience strategy. They're not just engagement gestures — empty things — they are very much changing tenants, changing how the landlord operates.

And here's why it matters now in May 2026: in October the STAIR transparency standards land, and residents will stop just being customers and start being somewhat of auditors with that legal right to scrutinise data. It's very much "a person in a home" rather than doing things the regulator is going to reward. Predictive data in this way stops being a nice-to-have — it becomes the early warning system you really need.

I found this really interesting looking through the judgments. I know this is sad — I probably need to get a life — but I've basically read through every single consumer-grading judgment published since April 2024, and there are some patterns that are reoccurring that just don't make sense.

The Wolverhampton Paradox

We've called this the Wolverhampton Paradox. Have a look at the stats — one of our marketing team has beautifully designed it. Wolverhampton: 95% non-emergency repairs, 99% on stage-one complaints on time. Great numbers. And then at the bottom, they got a C2.

BCP Council, on the other hand: lower numbers across the board — and they managed to get a C1. So from what you'd expect on KPIs alone, Wolverhampton's a C1 all day. But the regulator is looking at the how and the feel. And it's not just operational nuance, it's cultural. BCP got there by being honest about their problems, their shortcomings, and showing that tenant voice had actually changed something.

It's the same pattern at the top of the table. Places for People openly own their 57% TSM score on communication — and that really isn't anything to write home about. I'm sure lots of people on the call have better scores than that. The CEO openly admits "our communication just isn't great". Midland Heart deliberately shared data that makes the board uncomfortable. These are organisations with paid tenants on the operations committee. It's not a box-ticking exercise — it's bringing tenant voice into every aspect of the business.

There were a couple of new announcements yesterday that handed us two fresh examples. Milton Keynes — absolutely amazing stats, better than Wolverhampton — and again, a C2. The judgment says that most opportunities for tenants to influence have only been developed in the last 12 months. Same for Salford: effective, efficient, timely repairs, proactive on damp and mould, hitting their performance targets. C2. Why? Scrutiny is not tenant-led. Tenant data is incomplete and not routinely updated.

So there's four judgments there, all with the same verdict: operational KPIs without the tenant voice equals C2.

The May 2026 batch

The May batch yesterday sharpens the positive flip side too. BCP self-referred in June 2024 for overdue fire, electrical and water safety actions — and they got a C1. Stockport self-referred in December 2025 for overdue fire safety remedials — and they got a C1. Both of them got their grade because they raised the flag — not despite it. The regulator rewards posture and servicing what's broken — that's itself part of being reasonably competent.

One last thing worth knowing about where the floor sits. The May batch also delivered a C3 — to the London Borough of Islington. They had serious failings on stock-condition data and health-and-safety information accuracy. Only 13% of homes had been surveyed at inspection. But the judgment explicitly said that officers and Councillors demonstrated "a fair and respectful culture" towards tenants. So the culture was fine — the data wasn't.

The pattern isn't culture over numbers. It's very much both. You need data you can stand behind, and you need to show that your tenant voice has actually changed something. The regulator is not asking about your numbers and "do they look good?". They're asking: has that tenant voice done anything? Has it changed anything in your business? These examples just don't reflect that. The lived experience is the hard question that lives in the qualitative text, not the quant. And that's the gap we're here to bridge today.

The three lenses

We're looking at this through three lenses. You need what happened — the hard benchmarks and the numbers. You need the voice of the tenant — the qualitative feedback layer. And you need why it happened — how did it feel, and did anybody hear it? That's the case study. That's what it looks like at board level. The honest version, not the polished one.

One lens just isn't enough. Three gives you the truth. And as if by magic, that's our amazing panel today.

So that's me, Sarah Wilson — I'm here to host and field any questions you've got. We're absolutely delighted to be joined by a webinar newbie: John, a research manager at Housemark. We're super excited to have you on, John. He's been making his mark in the sector for 20 years now, and he's developed a methodology that works out where the sector's heading on cost and performance. If anyone really knows the numbers in detail, it's you, John.

And then we're delighted to bring back Steve from Wordnerds. Steve's one of our founders, and he's a true word nerd in every sense. He's used to spending all day looking at the millions of words that tenants use when they're not just ticking the survey box. He probably reads more surveys than telly. He finds the cultural signs that the KPIs just can't.

And then we're delighted to be joined by Ed from Curo. So Curo: a Wordnerds customer — but more importantly, a C1 organisation. Ed's going to be pulling back the curtain on what they've practically been doing to achieve the C1. Not perfection, definitely not "marketing-glossed finished product" — but it's exactly the posture that the top-rated landlords are taking.

So, John — over to you.

[10:24] John Wickenden (Housemark): The quantitative view

John Wickenden: Okay, thank you. Just dealing with a bit of echo there.

Looking at some of the data and desktop analysis I've done. The starting point: we've got a bit of an idea about where the C1 grading comes from and what goes into it. But I just wanted to flag the methodology that the Regulator of Social Housing uses.

The inspection model is made up of seven components, and it doesn't just cover the consumer angle. It covers the governance and viability, which for housing associations (and to an extent for local authorities) sit in the background for the consumer judgment:

• Strategy — the delivery of medium and short-term values; value for money.
• Structure — how the corporate, financial and governance elements of an organisation interact; where the oversight is reporting and understanding.
• Service outcomes — more aligned with the consumer standards. Specific references to stock quality, tenancy management, anti-social behaviour, sustainment, rent collection — dealing with the tenants and the properties they live in.
• Risk management — the appetite that an organisation has. Going so far but not too far in taking risks.
• Transparency — the interactions on a personal level between the landlord and tenants. Fairness and respect, meeting the diverse needs of tenants, making sure the service is structured around how they want to engage.
• Financial resilience — more focused on the G-and-V sides of the inspection, but in terms of consumer standards it's looking at costs and efficiency. An efficient landlord works better and is likely to have better services as a result.
• Governance — how the strategic outcomes are developed by the board, and how that promotes the long-term success of the organisation.

So in terms of the actual C1 to C4 gradings themselves, there's a sliding scale. And like Sarah was saying, it's not just enough to get to C1 — you need to be surpassing it, going above and beyond what it says. That's the sort of minimum. If you've got C2, you've got some weaknesses, and then you start getting into the failings of C3s and C4s. We haven't had that many C4 judgments — only a few have trickled through. I think we're still in single figures.

What the numbers look like

I've done some crunching looking at Tenant Satisfaction Measure data, value-for-money metrics data, Housemark's own data — looking at costs, satisfaction, performance that sit outside the regulatory environment. And I found some patterns.

The regulator doesn't appreciate people trying to draw a direct line between TSMs and consumer judgments — they bristle if that's ever put to them. But there are some tendencies.

C1s tend to have higher satisfaction ratings. Out of the three groups (couldn't really do C4s — not enough of them to get a decent sample), but out of C1 to C3, higher satisfaction — 9–10 percentage points higher than C2s and C3s.

More staff per home. Stands to reason — when you're working efficiently, you can have more people on the ground, more people having contact with tenants. So it's really important to both have lower costs and make sure people are there when the tenants need them.

Lower maintenance costs. We've often found this with Housemark data: an inverse correlation between higher maintenance costs and lower satisfaction. It's about the organisation working efficiently.

Higher energy efficiency ratings. A bit of a googly, but I think it shows that once you've got the basics in place around meeting consumer standards, you can start to think about other responsibilities you have as a landlord — like improving the energy efficiency of your stock. We see higher average EPC ratings across C1 landlords compared to C2 and C3.

Some characteristics of the other gradings:

C2s have got the efficiency, but it's translated into lower overall costs. C2 landlords tended to have higher new-supply rates — bigger development programmes in proportion to their overall stock size (that's looking at the VFM metric). It's almost like if you've got to make a choice between service to existing tenants and building new, C2s tend to go on the building-new side, which then affects the service with existing tenants. Think about hundreds and hundreds of new properties coming on board — the impact on the housing-management staff, the repair staff working on the front line.

C2s had the shortest wait times for calls. Call wait times have gone up exponentially over the last 10 years — Housemark data from the mid-2010s, we were looking at an average of 30 seconds wait. Now it's more like an average of 300 seconds. It's crazy. But we're still seeing C2s with that efficiency hat on — getting those lower call wait times — but not necessarily looking at the value added. C2s' lowest arrears out of the three groups.

C3s — where you've actually got some failings identified by the regulator — have the lowest staffing ratios of all three groups. Little or no development (development is something you can do once you've got your basics in place). It was very much smaller — could be related to the number of local authorities included in that C3 group (local authorities tend to have much smaller development programmes than housing associations). Highest management costs — efficiency again. C3s aren't making that grade; they're likely to have higher costs as a result. Could be they're moving into better territory, or they're just not using the money efficiently.

Another bellwether measure: extended void times. There are so many moving parts to getting a property re-let that if management, maintenance teams, third parties, and external agencies aren't all working together, a property just sits empty for longer and longer.

What this feels like (the inspection)

So what does this feel like? We've done a few mock-inspection works for landlords, and it's really interesting to see the approach to the different elements of an inspection — where we've gone in to look and see whether a landlord is meeting the elements of consumer standards.

There's a document review part of an inspection — the impression you give. If you're a council that used to have an ALMO and you're providing documents that still have the ALMO logo on them, or it says "this policy will be reviewed in July 2025" and it's May 2026 now — we see all these kinds of things, and I'm sure the regulator does too. They don't take kindly to seeing things that are blatantly out of date.

Communications. We see an awful lot of lip service — "well, we put that information on the website, or we put it on a notice board in the bottom of the block of flats". It's not about punting out something that gives information across at face value. It's about how you process that, and how you process what's coming back to you from the tenants.

Data quality. Comes up in virtually every inspection report. C3s much more likely to have criticism for poor data quality than C1s. It's quite simple to talk about — you need comprehensive coverage, you need to know who is in your properties, you need to know what communication methods they prefer — but it's actually putting it in place. We've got quite a lot of C1s to learn from on that.

Something that's quite hard to put your finger on, but easy enough to spot just by talking to people at an organisation — as we've done at Housemark when we've done these mock inspections, consumer-standards assessments — you get an idea about whether the person working for the organisation is on the ball. Whether they feel they know enough information about what they're given. Whether they have the right kind of support around them. Whether the relationships of the data flowing upwards and downwards through the organisation, between operational teams and executives, is in the right place. How well do these people work together? That's a cultural thing. I'm sure as part of the inspection process the regulator picks up on this.

And something the RSH doesn't really do, but I find is a really interesting part of doing any mock inspection or assessment of consumer standards: actually getting out on estates. The Audit Commission used to do this 20 years ago — they'd go out and see for themselves. Are the gutters leaking? Is there an overflow pipe from a boiler dripping down a wall? What do the internal communal areas look like? What do they smell like? Is the grass cut? All those things give you an impression about whether the landlord is delivering the right level of service and meeting expectations.

I've got a slide on Housemark — I haven't really got time to go through it now, but we do offer quite a lot of services, and there's information about what we do at Housemark if you're not familiar with us, and a bit about me as well if you want to get in contact. Over to the next slide — we are looking at qualitative feedback.

Sarah Wilson: That was great — thank you so much, John. Fascinating. I really liked your comparisons of the different consumer grades. Interesting about the lower overall cost for C2 and the shorter call wait times. Did you not get the memo that every organisation is experiencing higher than usual call volumes? It's been going on for the last 10–15 years now. (He's gonna laugh.) Really interesting, and I'm looking forward to delving into that in a bit more detail in the Q&A. Right, over to you, Steve. Show us the words.

[24:11] Steve Erdal (Wordnerds): The qualitative view

Steve Erdal: Always a pleasure. Thank you so much, Sarah, and thank you all for joining us today. It's lovely to see so many people here. Thank you, John — I thought that was fascinating.

We've talked now about how to quantify some of these key challenges, key elements that the consumer rating will be looking for. There then is also these gold mines of information that come from customer and qualitative feedback.

One of the neatest ways I've ever heard that described: there's lots of ways of telling whether your tenants — whether your customers — are safe. There's lots of tests you can do, lots of maintenance you can cover. But do you know whether they feel safe? For that, you require qualitative information. You require listening to and understanding your customers.

So what I'm going to talk about is how that qualitative feedback tends to influence the consumer grading — how that consumer understanding can then influence that consumer grading.

The Wordnerds–Housemark Benchmark

We're very lucky at Wordnerds to have a unique data set to explore that issue: the Wordnerds–Housemark Benchmark. For our frequent flyers, you'll be aware of this — there's a previous webinar where we looked at it. The headlines, for those of you who haven't heard of it before: a group of 18 housing associations made the incredibly generous decision to make available their customer feedback — the free-text answers around their TSM. That has allowed us to do all kinds of interesting benchmarking around the TSM feedback surveys.

Relevant to this conversation: we now have groups forming in terms of their consumer rating grades. Within that group we've got 4 C1 organisations, 4 C2, and 3 C3. For the purposes of this conversation we've split them into C1, and then C2 and C3 together. Obviously, as John and Sarah have already alluded to, there is a big difference between C2 and C3, and we're not remotely suggesting that everything that happens in a C1 is positive and everything that happens in a C2 isn't. But it was a way of trying to get a sense of, from the customer perspective, what are the differences we see when we look at that C1 rating.

The other qualitative feedback that we thought would be interesting to look at are those regulatory judgments themselves. If we're talking about how to go about receiving a C1, thinking about how the regulator perceives this question in the judgments they give out — that felt like a resource we should look at. So I'm going to briefly run through some of the key findings.

TSM data: what was different about the C1s

Interestingly, two things seemed to have a real impact on those C1 scores — and one thing that didn't.

Mental health was the biggest single differentiator. The biggest difference in terms of what the customer said about C1-rated organisations vs non-C1s was the sentiment around mental health. When a customer said of their own volition (not a quantitative question — just saying within a free-text answer "I suffer from mental health challenges"), their sentiment for C1 housing associations was 10 points higher. This is a big jump — the biggest jump of any of these different areas of the customer experience. We break it down into 270-odd different elements, from time it takes for a repair, all the way through to anti-social behaviour, grounds maintenance, safety and security. The thing most different about the C1-rated organisations was how they dealt with customers who discussed mental-health challenges.

Within the top 10 of those kinds of key pertinent things to C1, we saw lots of other physical and mental health challenges — from financial struggles to physical health issues to elderly customers. That understanding of those particular instances felt like a distinguishing factor between the C1s and the non-C1s.

Digital navigation drives a chain of trust. In terms of being able to find the information you need over digital sources — and also pass back information in that same method — we saw a significantly higher C1 sentiment score. Digital navigation was an area of positivity for those housing associations. And it had a knock-on effect: positivity around digital meant customers felt like they were more informed. We saw significant overlap between customers mentioning these issues and feeling informed. And that then had an onward effect to customers feeling like they trusted their housing association — which is a key element to all of these consumer challenges. A really interesting way of looking at relatively simple, non-massive-infrastructure projects — tangible improvements that lead to the intangibles of customer feeling, which in turn mean customers trust their housing association more.

The thing that didn't impact: financial sentiment. We were really interested to note that the C2s and C3 housing associations we analysed actually had a higher sentiment around financial issues — around rent, around charges — than the C1s did. C1s' customers were more likely to be negative when they mentioned rent, when they mentioned the cost of the housing.

A couple of reasons for that. Firstly, where there were more significant issues, customers tended to discuss the rent, the financial stuff, less. But this is also potentially a hygiene issue — something where you can get to a certain point of acceptability, but it will not push you up further into those higher echelons of customer sentiment or rating.

The four signals from the regulatory judgments

We also took a look at those regulatory judgments — by the regulator itself. There were a couple of key areas, and differences between the C1s and those who weren't awarded C1s. As Sarah said, these didn't necessarily lie across quantifiable score-based issues — but were differences we picked out within the data.

1. Triangulation. Getting data from a wide range of sources and pulling it together. We saw the regularity and diversity of that as a key factor for C1s.

2. Root cause resolution. Using that data to actually go and tackle root causes — demonstrating how you use that information to drill into "what can we actually do to support customers?". Taking that line we just saw with the digitisation issues, going all the way through to trust — the same thing here, of how can we drill back into what is actually causing these issues — was seen as a real strong suit for those C1 organisations.

3. Listening across formal and informal channels. I know this can be a really challenging area for housing associations. Often data is siloed; often you're trying to pull together a lot of different areas. It was really interesting that the Places for People C1 report mentioned particularly a range of formal and informal ways: not just waiting for the regular survey, not just having to do an official complaint — but trying to get that atmospheric understanding of the wider organisation. John talked a bit about this in his presentation.

4. Acting on the evidence. The BCP idea of "you said, we did". We often see this kind of thing — not just "this is what our customers are saying" but "this is what we're doing about it" and "this is how we're informing the customers that their feedback has been listened to".

Those are the four areas of difference we saw in the qualitative comments within those judgments that separated the C1s from the C2s. And as Sarah said, even where scores are higher for the C2s, these are the things that seem to nudge organisations into that C1 bracket.

Where to start

The data gathering is one of the biggest challenges — bringing together data sets. You don't need to have everything together straight away, and waiting to try and get to that magical point is often a mistake. Start small, with what you can get, show the insight you have, and build from there.

It's really important to categorise the data. A lot of what we're talking about — digital issues, rent, different customer priorities and vulnerabilities — that understanding of how you can categorise that data so you can combine it with the quantity becomes really pivotal.

And always think about your initial purpose. We've been talking today about C1 rating and how you might go about understanding where you are with regard to comparing this with what a C1 dataset tends to look like. But think about what the purpose is for what you're trying to achieve, and focus in on the specifics around your data. I think that's how you get to that point of both having the best chance of improving your rating, and also ultimately changing your customers' lives for the better.

With that, I'll pass back to Sarah.

Sarah Wilson: Fascinating. Thank you so much, Steve. Get your questions for John and Steve in the chat. That was brilliant. I'd love — if we had a bit more time, either afternoon for this, don't you? — to unpack the physical and mental health sentiment and why that was so much higher. That is such a marked difference. Really, really interesting.

Now we're going to hand over to Ed at Curo. We're super excited to have Ed join the webinar. I see we've got Maddie in the chat as well, so she can back you up. We're absolutely delighted to hear from you on Curo's experience, what the inspection was like, and some insights around your process and how you've achieved that situation.

[37:28] Ed Bramall (Curo): The case study

Ed Bramall: Sure, absolutely. The compulsory slide, just introducing us for those who don't know who we are. We are an organisation based in the west of England — Bristol and Bath, for anyone who's not from the west of England. We own and manage around 4,000 homes.

As John said, there's loads of considerations that go into that C1 rating. Thinking about preparing for this session, we were looking from a data perspective at what conclusions we've drawn from that rating.

While we're really proud of some aspects of our performance, there's some stuff in there — there are weaknesses within it. It's a mixed picture. A lot of it's around the middle, and there are some areas where we're actually bottom quartile. So it clearly isn't that we're just spectacularly good at everything and well done. It's got to be something else.

A couple of things I'd really pull out.

Data quality and radical honesty

Data quality. We were able to talk about all the work we've done over many years to improve and respect data quality — throughout the organisation, right up to the board, who regularly receive reports on this so they can be assured that what they're giving has substance behind it.

But also we were very open about our imperfections. We could describe them — we knew what they were, we could see within the data where they were. But we also had plans in place to use data. Curiosity was definitely a watchword — being curious about our data and what we can take from it. There's definitely an honesty dimension to this.

Starting with complaints

And then lastly: the fact that we were able to — as well as having all these ideas where at some point we'll get around to it — actually start doing some stuff in this space. At the point of the inspection, this was most tangibly in relation to complaints.

Complaints have been a big problem for us, as described on the slide. We'd adopted, or were starting to adopt, a new model for managing them. But it's that whole thing about learning — how do we learn from them? So we engaged with Wordnerds specifically around that in the first instance. It's broadened out very much since then, but specifically focused on complaints to begin with.

This slide is really trying to sum up what that looks like for us. We'd spent a year or so prior to approaching Wordnerds developing a data warehouse, which was bringing together all of that quantitative data — stuff about our customers, our properties from multiple systems, understanding our transactions at a much more granular level in relation to compliance complaints. Doing transformations within the data warehouse around categorising them more, so they weren't all different. There was some categorisation there.

But probably like lots of people on this call, so much of our valuable data is in note form — it's words. Really, really hard. From a complaint perspective, we had all of that in there, but just prior to working with Wordnerds, really difficult. Any analysis we did was pretty manual. It was very hard to see the wood for the trees. The work we've done to develop those themes, to categorise those things, and apply quantities to the categorisations has been really game-changing.

Treating learning as a data set

The last circle on here is a crucial data set we identified was missing from everything else: the so-whats. Making sure that we treat learning as a data set in itself — that we've got that in terms of the evidence, the recommendations, the actions, and that we're following that through, so we can hold people to account.

That was where it all started. Since then, we'd for many years been doing transactional surveys at large volumes across the organisation, and perception surveys as well through the TSM. So we've wrapped all of that into this. We talked at the inspection about — these were our plans and intentions to do it.

Vision

Lastly, our vision as an organisation is that by 2034, everyone will feel proud of the quality of our homes. So it's all about feeling, and unpacking that and grappling with that is something we're actively working on at the moment.

That's my reflections — the practicalities of all of this.

Sarah Wilson: Wow, that's so interesting. Thank you so much, and thanks for the kind words, Ed. Great work there.

I hope you don't mind, but this is so fascinating. I've got a few things I'm interested in with your work with Wordnerds. I think you do some things that are quite different to other organisations, specifically around the complaints piece. Would you mind first talking a little bit about your complaints-learning report — what you do to close that inner and outer loop we've talked about before? Most people say they'll learn from complaints, but how have you developed that in a bit more detail with your work with Wordnerds?

Ed Bramall: Yeah. This is a combination of both things we're doing to categorise our complaints using the quantitative data, and also wrapping in all of that qualitative use of the themes. Which allows us to get much more down into the detail.

At best we might have been able to say a complaint relates to repairs — but it was never... You know, we have a lot more complaints about plumbing jobs versus electrical jobs, and the complaints about plumbing jobs tend to be about this; electrical jobs tend to be about all of those kinds of things. It's allowed us to get much more into detail across the what and the how of the complaints.

I think I've lost connection.

Sarah Wilson: Still there, just a bit. Still there. Sorry, I've got a thing come up.

Ed Bramall: Cool. So that's what we've done in terms of learning report — identified that granularity and concentrations of complaints. Obviously most complaints are always going to be about repairs, because that's what we do most of. But actually, can we understand that in relation to those overall volumes as well?

Sarah Wilson: And just taking that a step further — I know something you've worked on with the guys is the action tracker. It's really easy, isn't it, for everyone to say "oh yes, listen to complaints, we do something about it" — but the work you've been doing is really interesting. Your customer success manager highlighted that as something most people don't do — your action tracker, how you actually go about doing some of the actions. Would you mind talking about that in a bit more detail, if your WiFi connection allows?

Ed Bramall: Yeah, absolutely. And that applies — I hope so, it's not great, is it? — that applies across all of our customer feedback, whether it's complaints, surveys, resident feedback. What we've done is pull all of this — it's quite simple actually in a lot of respects — into a single data set, actually a SharePoint list. It's nothing fancy, but it plugs into our data warehouse and it allows us to —

Through doing the analysis, going out to directors and saying "here's things we're finding. What do you think about it? What could you do to address these issues? Let's agree some actions that you're going to take away and implement. Let's record those on the tracker and timescales and check that you're doing it."

That is all part of our customer feedback reports — and increasingly we're integrating it into corporate reporting as well, so we can absolutely close that loop on "you said, we did". What I'd really like to start doing at some point soon is then checking the impact of what we did afterwards. So it's an endless loop of checking that this customer feedback is having an impact. Your work's never done, is it? Just keep going and going and going. It's like the Forth Bridge.

Sarah Wilson: Not when you're curious. (Laughs.) No — curious at Curo. Dad joke alert.

So just going back to your slide — I absolutely love what you've written about your vision. That really clear, strong vision that you want everyone to feel proud about the quality of your homes. I know that Maddie's done a side piece on pride as a theme and emotional layer and the lag — trying to look at when people feel proud about their homes, when does that show up in the numbers? Would you mind just referencing that, just to end off your section?

Ed Bramall: Yeah, absolutely. I will do my best, but I'm sure Maddie can explain this much better than I can.

Essentially, through our TSM surveys, we've got a supplementary question we ask about how proud customers feel of their homes. So we capture a quantitative score through that mechanism. We don't actually ask a specific question of "why do you feel proud?" — for a number of reasons. But what we do instead is look at the answers those customers are giving to the other questions, and the supplementary questions we do have within the TSM survey, to understand —

For this group of customers we know — talking about their experiences in other regards, particularly in relation to how well-maintained their home is — Maddie's put together a whole series of themes that are linguistic indicators about emotional warmth, sense of belonging, sense of ownership, disconnection. All those kinds of things which are in some ways intangible — but it's trying to get some tangibility around feeling. It's really interesting what's coming out of that, and we're going to carry on working on it.

Sarah Wilson: Well, luckily you got to the end of your section before your connection gave up, Ed. Thank you so much. That was brilliant. Really enjoyed that. Get your questions for Ed in the chat — and we'll, we'll make him answer them. He's got to handwrite them; we'll get them from him.

That was amazing. Thank you so much, guys. I can see some questions coming through. So you've still got a couple of minutes to get some questions out.

[49:59] Closing remarks and resource pack

Sarah Wilson: I'm going to do a very quick wrap-up, and then we're going to go to questions. Hopefully we've still got some time to run through some of the questions we've had.

What you'll receive from today: we're going to send a little care package with the recording and some resources. We always commit to answering every question, so you'll get a question section as well with the answers in.

I hope you've taken away a few things today. The first one: it's all about mindset. That's the biggest thing I've found from our amazing speakers.

It's about curiosity. Ed said it himself. It's about radical honesty — picking up the parts you're uncomfortable with and shining a light on them. Which doesn't come easy to any of us. I think all three of you have spoken about that to some degree. It's about connecting the what to the why, and then doing something with them, as you've said.

The resource pack and the £5,000 custom benchmark

We've also got a little guide we're going to be sending across to help you get on your way with this. It's all about how to improve your rating, your chances, your prospects overall. The deep dive into the regulator's language we talked about, and Steve's analysis — it's going to show you how to map that onto your own performance. Built on the same judgment analysis we've been showing this session, including the brand-new batch published yesterday.

We've also got a deeper offer for you. If you're looking at this and thinking "I'd love to see where I'm at, I want to be part of this benchmark" — we are running this custom report. We did this in January, and that's why we've got four months between the webinars, because it was super popular. People love the idea of being able to access insights they've never had access to before. It's the UK's first qualitative-data benchmark, where the data is all together for the first time. We've got some people on the call who have gone through that process — hopefully they're happy with it.

We're going to be offering this again — the same benchmark data, a custom report, and we're offering the same discounted price as last time, just under the £5,000 mark. What you get for that is a dashboard in Power BI that features this data from Housemark and Wordnerds, a fully managed report, and also a stakeholder workshop. If you're interested, just click the button — it's just a call with me. So it's very non-salesy, as you can probably tell.

[55:50] Q&A

"How independent is the C grade from the G grade? Could an organisation sustain a strong G if consumer outcomes are weaker?"

Sarah Wilson: This one's probably for John.

John Wickenden: Yeah, there's definitely a flow. You look at the seven pillars of the inspection regime the regulator has, and there is definitely read-across between governance and the consumer grade.

I was at a conference last year, and the outgoing Chief Exec, Fiona McGregor, said "there's no reason why a landlord should not achieve a G1". So there's really strong emphasis on getting that governance in place, and then the assumption is, I think, that better things will follow in terms of meeting the consumer standards.

Sarah Wilson: Great — really helpful, thank you.

From the chat: "Directors expected to talk fluently about the TSM scores"

Sarah Wilson: This wasn't a question, but I just wanted to pop it up — I thought it was really interesting. There was a discussion going on in the chat while we were talking, all around the actual inspections.

One of the observations was that directors were on top of the detail — they couldn't have asked one of the research experts in the organisation; they would have expected directors to be able to talk fluently about the TSM scores and the direction. Which, yeah, is not what you'd expect. And there's also a lot of information to be submitted.

Ed, how does that match what Curo experienced?

Ed Bramall: Yeah, absolutely. It was our exec and our directors — the relevant senior directors — that were involved in the actual discussion with the inspectors. So a lot of documentation provided in advance, a lot of which the whole business was involved in supporting. But actually, yeah — having those conversations, and prepping them and helping the right answers at their fingertips, was definitely a thing.

Sarah Wilson: Really interesting, isn't it? You're sort of preparing your internal team members. You wouldn't really expect that.

"Did you notice any organisation structure patterns in C1 orgs that seemed to support stronger data triangulation?"

Sarah Wilson: Now we've got another question from Victoria.

Steve Erdal: It's a great question. Without wanting to give it away — one of the key things about the benchmark is that the organisations involved are anonymous. We try and make that a stipulation. And we're always looking for new housing associations to join that incredible group.

But the distinctions I've seen would be generally — quite similar to the discussion and the comment that Chris just made — about both the data in and the data out, the inputs and outputs, being understood and championed at quite a high level in the organisation.

Data triangulation often involves people relinquishing data sets they have previously controlled. And that is often a lot easier when you have that understanding of the importance of this from the top. We often see when new CEOs come in, that kind of thing, that can often be a catalyst for that kind of change.

Having that interest at the top, having a clear path from those insights to the senior leadership team — the best housing associations I've worked with tend to have a clear line from the data to the organisation. I think Chris has articulated so well why that's so important, and also why the regulator seems to think it's so important as well. So that understanding at the top level tends to be the key thing that is really valuable when you're looking for that kind of C1 score.

"What practical steps can landlords take to start the journey to C1?"

Sarah Wilson: We're going to pop one more question up, and then we'll wrap up. This is a nice one to end on, for you, John.

John Wickenden: Yeah. From my perspective, looking at the kinds of things we've done when we've gone into landlords, it's about mapping at the very, very practical level. Thinking about that document review:

• What documents do you have?
• Where do they map across to specific elements of the consumer standards?
• Have you got the information in the right place?
• Do you know where it is? Can you access it?
• Are you going to be supplying 3,000 documents to the regulator — which they're not going to appreciate, by the way?

Those are the kind of practical steps you could do at that first stage. Then it's a case of thinking, well, what's your data coverage — the harder-to-do stuff. But that initial stage, just think about the document review.

Sarah Wilson: I would. It's really interesting, that mapping of the documents, and doing the audit as a first step.

[59:23] Close

Sarah Wilson: Well, that was absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much, guys. I don't know about you guys in the chat, but that flew by for me. Went so fast. Really enjoyed that format.

We'd love to hear from you. These are all designed to aid the knowledge of the sector and share best practice. If you enjoyed it, then email me. If you didn't enjoy it, email Steve. We'll be back very soon with our next webinar. But really hope you enjoyed that today. Keep your eye out for some gifts heading into your inbox.

I just want to say a huge thank you as well. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, Steve. And thank you, Ed. Obviously without you, this would have been a massive monologue for me. So really appreciate your different perspectives and all the time you spent on this to share this knowledge for everybody.