Rent arrears management practices in the housing association sector

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management . Conversely, a northern case study association had found that LAs had become more reluctant to contemplate electronic data transfer in the wake of the well-publicised 2008 losses of electronic data by government departments . In response, the HA had invested more effort in developing scanning techniques to create electronic records from hard copy reports . Some local authorities were said to be “triggerhappy” about suspensions of payment, for example after making a home visit where the occupier was not in the property, or where there had been a change in circumstances . In the meantime, tenants might fail to make sufficient provision for the part of the rent that they might be expected to pay after a new determination (which, again, might take up to three months to make) . In HA C, it was said by a manager that one urban local authority was only processing new claims leaving change of circumstances claims on hold . The other issues identified above were the mundane, everyday experience of the traps of the HB system . Overpayments are not necessarily the fault of the tenant but have a disproportionate impact on their rent account when they are claimed back . Overpayment letters from the local authority might also require ‘translation’ because they 92 were too complex to understand (HA E/SRO) . Non-dependent deductions were said to have a particular effect on BME communities in HA B, and, due to their significance, were generally unwelcome . Where a member of a household worked part-time, this would have a disproportionate effect on their HB to the extent that it created disadvantages for this type of work . And changes in employment status required cancellations and re-applications with consequential delays . We specifically asked participants about the impact of the current economic crisis on their tenants . All case study HAs indicated that it had little impact on their rent arrears management operations except that there were increasing claims for HB (and, some added, with knock-on effects on time taken to process claims) . b) Cultural change There are two elements to the theme of cultural change . It relates to internal change, and, second, to attempts to change the attitudes of current tenants towards their rent accounts . Internal cultural change The reference to internal change is also at two levels, symbolic and organisational . As regards the former, this is characterised by the labels attached
to officers and policies . Officers are not referred to as “rent arrears officers”, but, as with the private sector, they are account managers, income officers or revenue officers . Partly, this reflects the fact that rent arrears has traditionally been regarded as the poor relation of housing management and an early career job from which personnel regularly move . Changing labels are designed to change and accord status to personnel, shifting away from the use of temporary staff . Equally changing labels to policy documents are designed to capture the new emphasis – so, in HA E, the label for the policy document is now “rent collection”, as opposed to “rent arrears”, to establish a positive relation between tenants, the ROs, and the rent account . As regards organisational change, what was perhaps surprising and unexpected was that each of the case study HAs, except HA C, had changed the internal organisation of their rent arrears management within the last few years . HA C was in the process of changing its internal organisation at the time of our fieldwork . There was a considerable degree of unanimity in that organisational change as well . Rent arrears management was largely a centralised service, other than in HA A and HA C’s future structure; dedicated rent arrears officers, as opposed to generic staff with rent arrears as one part of their job specification; each HA sought to balance the need for individual officers to exercise discretion within clear hierarchical lines of control – to put this another way, managerial control is being exercised to a greater extent than previously in our case studies to ensure uniformity of approach, whilst balancing that against a recognition that each case has different characteristics . This last point is significant because of a recognition among at least some of the case studies - especially HA A, C and E – that their performance on rent arrears management did not compare favourably with other HAs against which they benchmarked their service . Highlighting the broader “cultural” significance of a “specialist” arrears management model, one senior interviewee stressed the significance of recruiting “credit control” professionals from outside the housing field . As well as contributing new expertise, such recruits were seen as bringing a different culture to the operation, offsetting the “moralistic” element of the housing management tradition . Such “incomers” were seen as adopting a “more rational” approach to debt recovery, which recognised that an eviction usually means writing off the associated arrears . Linked with this, the association had worked to establish a stronger “income collection culture” in place of what was seen as a previous over-emphasis Rent arrears management practices in the housing association sector 93
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Rent arrears management practices i
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Contents Executive summary . . . .
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Executive summary Introduction This
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Key underlying factors were said to
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could, in part, reflect the growing
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overpayments and suspensions were p
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Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Backgrou
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arrears management and related aspe
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“… there may occasionally be ci
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under Article 8 of the Convention,
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y HAs . 37 The Circular informed as
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Pre-action protocol for possession
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The purpose of these interviews was
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Table 1.1 - Case Study HAs Organisa
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Chapter 2 Rent arrears management p
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Pawson et al’s study found that 9
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2.3 Rent arrears management practic
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this with any certainty . 69 Howeve
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authority can also lead to a lack o
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2.5 The use of Ground 8 Although th
Page 41 and 42:
In the Hunter et al study, 97 which
Page 43 and 44: some comment on the effect of the P
Page 45 and 46: • Ground 8 provided certainty to
Page 47 and 48: There was a difference of opinion a
Page 49 and 50: 3.3 The use of Ground 8 Whereas ans
Page 51 and 52: do so early enough, or at all . Cla
Page 53 and 54: Chapter 4 Rent collection and arrea
Page 55 and 56: 4.3 Housing Benefit service perform
Page 57 and 58: Table 4.3 - Housing association evi
Page 59 and 60: As shown in Figure 4 .1, CORE data
Page 61 and 62: were collected for landlords with l
Page 63 and 64: Most associations report initiating
Page 65 and 66: 5.2 Organisation of rent arrears ma
Page 67 and 68: Table 5.2 - Primary structure of ar
Page 69 and 70: Table 5.3 - Recent changes in organ
Page 71 and 72: Table 5.6 - Staff training provisio
Page 73 and 74: Within the transfer landlord cohort
Page 75 and 76: • Where arrears were accrued befo
Page 77 and 78: Table 5.9 - Estimated percentage of
Page 79 and 80: elatively high response rate achiev
Page 81 and 82: The survey sought to collect statis
Page 83 and 84: Ground 8 actions typically accounte
Page 85 and 86: How is the scale of Ground 8 use ch
Page 87 and 88: already routinely exercising the ac
Page 89 and 90: Chapter 6 Case study evidence Chapt
Page 91 and 92: Annex 2 outlines our method, includ
Page 93: a couple of weeks to three months)
Page 97 and 98: RM put it, “caused uproar from te
Page 99 and 100: preferred form of the organisation
Page 101 and 102: tenant contacts are now recorded on
Page 103 and 104: as a result, would make an order un
Page 105 and 106: use - in these cases, it is viewed
Page 107 and 108: g) The tenant perspective In each c
Page 109 and 110: Ground 8 was generally to scrutinis
Page 111 and 112: Ground 8 was said to be used as a
Page 113 and 114: The key stakeholders regarded the P
Page 115 and 116: ule it would not be used where HB w
Page 117 and 118: Table A1.1 - Evicted households by
Page 119 and 120: uncontactable as a result) . Where
Page 121 and 122: Just under half of all cases in the
Page 123 and 124: Annex 2 Case study HA selection Our
Page 125 and 126: Annex 3 Profile of case study housi
Page 127 and 128: However, after a review across its
Page 129 and 130: as developing joint working with th
Page 131 and 132: Annex 4 Case study topic guides HA
Page 133 and 134: 19. What has been your recent exper
Page 135 and 136: 12. How are your tenants helped wit
Page 137 and 138: 9. If RSLs rely on Ground 8, what i
Page 139 and 140: 4 Tenant employment circumstances (
Page 141 and 142: 10 Value (£) of arrears at defined
Page 143 and 144: Our offices Maple House 149 Tottenh
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Rent arrears management practices in the housing association sector

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