City of York Council's housing services team is to launch a review of performance after a drop in levels of overall satisfaction among tenants.

In terms of issues such as speed and quality of repairs the council - winners of Beacon Status in 1999 for its housing maintenance and improvement service - is still a high performer but the housing team is worried that actual performance is not reflected in customer perception in the latest Annual Housing Service Monitor.

The 2001 monitor, the latest annual survey of 800 tenants carried out since 1990, shows that this year overall satisfaction dipped below 80 percent to 77 percent for the first time since the new council was launched in 1996.

However, 85 percent of tenants still consider their rent represents good value for money and more detailed questions revealed other bright spots in the survey.

They included a large drop in the numbers citing repairs as the reason they were unhappy with the council's housing department - down from 56 percent to 37 percent - and 68 percent of repairs being completed in one visit, up five percentage points from 2000. Rent collection and the speed of re-letting have also improved, maintaining the council's position among the country's best performers. In terms of letting homes the survey also reported increasing satisfaction with arrangements for payment of rent, tenant participation levels and the council's management of communal areas. Other positives in the survey include a drop from 28 percent to 23 percent of tenants experiencing a nuisance citywide and a bigger, 13 percent, drop in Acomb.

Disappointing results from the survey included a fall in the number of people happy that repairs were carried out on time (from 89 to 81 percent) and of those happy with the repair itself. There were also falls in the levels of satisfaction with the council's customer service for tenants. Bill Hodson, the council's senior assistant director for strategic services, said, "The annual housing service monitor is an important snapshot of tenants' opinion but has to be set in the context of information on actual performance against agreed targets. Those results paint a much brighter picture.

"Contradictions seem to exist between the headline satisfaction ratings for some services and the detailed responses from customers who have had recent, direct experience of a service - for example repairs where improvements have been achieved on many areas highlighted as problems in 2000."

Mr Hodson said surveys of specific services, including tenants' choice and external painting, showed generally higher levels of satisfaction while rising expectation among tenants was also an issue.

"It is also important to recognise that despite the falls in satisfaction these results would still put York above average in terms of national and regional performance. Having said that we are keen to see higher satisfaction levels among tenants - the AHMS results are disappointing viewed against the very high standards we have in York and we will be looking at them as part of our Best Value review of the council's housing management service."

Mr Hodson said the AHMS, performance monitoring information and Best Value performance indicators all measured the effectiveness of the housing management service in carrying out key housing management tasks.

"Repairs is still the key reason for dissatisfaction in the annual survey of tenants but there is also evidence that the main areas of dissatisfaction are being tackled effectively.

"In terms of jobbing repairs the average time is under nine days and monitoring performance in terms of categories of repairs still stands up well.

"There has been a fall in satisfaction with maintenance surveyors calling at agreed times although data on appointments shows positive results and we are already working Commercial Services staff, who carry out the actual repairs, to improve on this."

He said a new customer services team was already working to tackle problems without referral anywhere else with 58 percent of inquiries now being handled this way - up from only a fifth when the team was launched in July.

Mr Hodson said the results of survey would be fed into the ongoing Best Value review housing management. "We are taking tenants' views extremely seriously and will be drawing up an action plan to tackle the main causes of dissatisfaction."

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