Tenants in council housing in Swindon are not as happy as they were.

The borough council’s survey of satisfaction show satisfaction has dropped significantly since the last survey in 2013 - although a large majority of tenants are still content with the service they get.

Seventy-two per cent of respondents said they were either fairly or very satisfied overall by the council’s housing department.

But that’s a 13 percentage point drop from 2013.

Similar decreases are shown for other questions. Satisfaction with the quality of the home is down to 68 per cent from 79 per cent; satisfaction with the neighbourhood as a place to live is down from 86 per cent to 77 per cent and the proportion of tenants who think they get value for money for their rent has dropped from 80 per cent to 67 per cent.

Secretary of Swindon Tenants’ Campaign Group, Martin Wicks said: “The answers show that satisfaction is dropping - but they’re so broad they don’t give much detail.

“I think if the council really wants to address the issues it needs to ask more detailed questions: Were repairs done in time? Were they done well? That sort of thing.

“The council is trying to get more people to use its services online - and it can be very difficult to get anyone to answer the phone, and that’s a great source of frustration.”

A Swindon Borough Council spokesman said: “Last year, we changed the way in which we collected the tenant survey data. Previously we conducted face-to-face interviews, but we now encourage tenants to take part in an online survey. We e anticipated that our satisfaction scores would be lower than in previous years as people are likely to be more comfortable giving negative feedback through an online survey than they would to one of our housing officers.

“We see this as positive as the honest feedback we receive allows us to focus our efforts on improving the right services to ensure tenants are happy. Overall, we are confident we provide good value for money.”