Sovereign South+West, a leading provider of social housing, in the south and south west of England, is focused on providing a very high level of back up housing services to its residents.
Sovereign currently manages 15,000 homes across 36 different Local Authorities. A key part of our operation revolves around rent collection and arrears. In 2008 and 2009 Sovereign evicted 27 people from their home due to rent arrears, at a cost to the organisation of over £171,000.
Sovereign decided to see how this situation could be improved as despite our good performance we were still losing residents through rent arrears. Importantly every eviction was costing the organisation £6,500, including void costs and rent loss. More importantly still, there was also the social cost to those residents who were simply not paying rent at all.
As a result of this something needed to change and that change was our focus. We moved from a reactive service to a pro-active service. This involved more contact with residents, the provision of debt and benefits advice by staff and partner CABs and the creation of a pre-eviction panel.
As part of this Sovereign staff received training to allow them to verify documents for the largest Local Authority. Training was also provided to allow staff to make housing benefit assessments and to maximise residents money by signposting them to the appropriate support and advice.
Sovereign South+West piloted a pre-eviction panel at its Newbury Office. Using a local partner CAB the pilot aimed to get valuable debt and financial advice to residents that may not have engaged previously or did not disclose the financial problems they were facing.
Dan Smith, Rent Income Manager for Sovereign South+West, noted, “The success of the pre-eviction panel has shown the power of partners working together to offer residents the chance to seek financial help and get good financial advice before it is too late and they get evicted through rent arrears. It has also enabled Sovereign to reduce its number of evictions and saved the organisation money which can channelled into other services for residents.”
Further pre-eviction panel details:
The panel was created in July 2008 and consisted of the Housing Operations Manager, Rent Services Manager and a member of the homeless team from the Local Authority.
Residents who were due to have a warrant applied for were invited to the panel where they received free independent advice from the CAB and help to make an affordable offer to the panel to enable them to stay in their property.
The panel outlined the reasons for attending and the Local Authority also explained the homelessness process. This also helped to make residents aware of how they were likely to be viewed by the panel should an application be made.
At the end of pilot we had seen 26 cases with a total of £32,299 in rent arrears. Of these 26, 2 were evicted, 23 were paying as agreed and one abandoned. This equated to a total potential loss of £120,000 being avoided as a result of this work. Due to its success the pilot was extended.
In January 2009, 78 cases had been to the Pre-Eviction Panel with arrears totalling over £120,000. Of those 78, 7 were evicted, 1 abandoned and 70 were paying as agreed. Looking at the losses from the previous years this saved the organisation £455,000 in rent loss, void loss and rent arrears.
This highlights the financial benefits to the organisation. It also shows how effective and pro-active work can sustain tenancies, ensuring families are kept together and the rent is collected.
