One of Southwark Council’s goals is to maximise our rental income while preventing homelessness by engaging at the right time; we do this by enabling our income team to deal with the causes of arrears, not just the symptoms.
Making time for residents
Previously, our income officers managed all types of arrears cases on their individual patches. This structure meant that our residents received inconsistent service because of the way arrears cases were identified and prioritised. Our new ways of working have enabled our residents to be supported in sustaining their tenancies and avoid losing their homes.
Our strategy was to allocate all arrears cases into one of three workstreams, comprising ‘prevent’, ‘resolve’ and ‘recover’, each with a dedicated team of officers. As part of this strategy, we implemented NEC Software Solutions’ Account Analytics to prioritise our rent account selections, automate our processes and offer real-time data that’s easier to analyse, track and share.
One year on…
A year after we completed our full transition to ‘prevent, resolve and recover’, the results are clear. We’ve successfully shifted our focus towards being more proactive and efficient in preventing arrears and sustaining tenancies, with support given to prevent homelessness. We have twice as many people attending our ‘rent surgeries’ to get advice, and case completions and support referrals are both up by over a third.
Even during the ‘recover’ phase (where a case has gone to court), our officers are still working to prevent homelessness. For example, if a resident agrees to a repayment plan that we know is unrealistic, we will advise them to complete an income and expenditure assessment form and apply to the court for a variation to their court order.
Keeping tenancies & finances sustainable
It’s our job to recover the debt but we want to do that while keeping people in their homes. We’ve therefore incorporated a salary calculator into our arrangement process. This helps us to make quick checks on income and enable reasonable arrangement decisions that help to avoid future possession actions.
By improving our productivity and refocusing on prevention, we’re also keeping our finances on solid ground. Collection rates are higher than they were before and the proportion of direct debit payments has increased.
Investing in automation
Working with NEC, we have automated our rent arrears letters in line with our processes, right from the first notification that’s sent when arrears reach £150 through to the notice of seeking possession. Instead of manually preparing the letters, our income officers can now spend that time contacting residents, whether that’s making an early phone call or sorting out a more reasonable payment arrangement.
Our income officers are now thriving in their roles because they can now play to their particular skills in our different workstreams, knowing exactly where to prioritise and having more time to help residents.
Life-changing support
One of our ‘recovery’ workstream officers, Sandra Sinclair, now has more time to reach out to people who are in arrears but haven’t responded to phone calls. She recently helped one family who had a child who was unwell and were not coping; by working with them to review their finances and entitlements, an affordable repayment plan was agreed that prevented the escalation of the rent recovery process.
We know that people are still facing significant cost of living challenges but we are committed to using analytics to identify residents who may be vulnerable so that we can provide targeted support.
Leo Stanislaus is the operations manager for income at Southwark Council.
