Our history and experience

STATUS was first developed and promoted by the National Housing Federation in 1998, in partnership with the Housing Corporation, to provide a standard approach to testing the views of tenants and home owners on a range of key services provided by housing associations. The STATUS methodology is now also prescribed by Communities for Local Government (CLG) for local authorities and ALMOs.

The Federation has recently reviewed STATUS for Housing Corporation and CLG and a suite of new questionnaires has now been developed for all types of customers of social landlords, including general needs tenants, sheltered housing tenants, supported housing tenants and home owners. Copies of the standard questionnaires can be accessed via the Federation's website at www.housing.org.

In September 2008, Feedback Services Ltd was formed as a joint venture company with the Federation, offering the full range of market research services and consultancy linked to customer engagement and consultation, including STATUS.

Feedback has been conducting STATUS surveys and related exercises since 1998 and we have completed more than 600 STATUS and related surveys for social landlords since then. We have a database of over 600,000 tenants and an extensive bank of additional questions. We understand the how to engage customers time after time and are now working with landlords who are undertaking their 4th STATUS surveys.

We offer a full market research service including postal, telephone and face-to-face interviews methodologies. We have unrivalled expertise in customer consultation in the social housing sector, in data analysis and in using survey results to match business requirements. Our project team is fully committed to continuous improvement through customer consultation.

Our central team

Our central team includes Denise Raine (Managing Director), who has worked on the STATUS questionnaire since its development in 1998 and helped to establish the Federation's Feedback service. Denise has worked with over 150 landlords, from small inner-city BME housing associations to large-scale voluntary transfers and some of the largest local authorities in England.

Euan Ramsay, also a Director of Feedback, has worked in research and consultancy in the social housing field for over 30 years. He led the research section at the National Housing Federation in 1980s, where he was responsible for developing and implementing the CORE system. Euan spent 10 years in market research as a Director at mruk research, and has worked for a number of well-known consultancies as an Independent Tenant Advisor and related activities. He has conducted a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research exercises for social landlords, including over 100 resident satisfaction and related surveys.

Our Operations Manager, Victoria Gage has 12 years corporate experience and prides herself on delivering excellent customer service.

We work with approximately 10 associates who provide project management in England, Scotland and Wales.