Milton Keynes City Council won the silver award in the customer/tenant services category of the inaugural Housing Technology 2024 awards. James Terry, housing income operations manager at the council, explains how it has been cutting arrears and improving its tenants’ financial health.
Here at Milton Keynes City Council, we collect for our HRA (housing revenue account) and for the ‘general fund’ (that’s your standard ‘council housing’ and temporary accommodation). As with many housing income teams, our performance directly links to maintaining the financial viability of the HRA. The more money we collect, the more money can go straight back into the management and maintenance of our tenants’ homes.
Record arrears
Three years ago, the money owed to the council for rent arrears was at an all-time high (nearly five per cent of our gross annual rent charges). We had many tenants with high arrears and we were generally failing to act promptly when debts had been building.
The work of an income team can often be misunderstood as being focused on ‘just get the money in’, and that the income team’s sole interest is in retrieving payment proposals and pushing for higher payments, without concern for or interest in the respective tenants’ circumstances. This could have been how we chose to address our high rent debt but instead we opted for a different approach.
It’s true that many income teams will focus solely on immediate payments or even the automation of letters and text messages to ‘nudge’ people into paying. However, these approaches only bring very short-term success because they ignore the symptoms of a tenant struggling to pay the rent; they therefore fail to address the underlying cause of the problem.
Quality conversations with tenants
We decided early on to commit to quality conversations with tenants experiencing arrears. It was important for us to introduce a ‘fact-find first’ approach because we wanted to gain an understanding of what was affecting each tenant’s ability to pay.
By understanding that no two tenants’ circumstances are the same, we would be able to establish the underlying reason for their debts, before employing the best approach based on their circumstances and picking ‘the right tool for the right job’.
It was felt that providing support and guidance more relevant to individuals (rather than a one-size-fits-all, ‘pay as much as you can’ approach) would be the only way to truly show a caring and invested strategy toward getting tenants able and motivated to pay on time.
Barriers to paying
When barriers impacting tenants’ ability to pay were identified, we could take steps to support tenants in overcoming them. Where bad decisions were having an impact on their ability to pay, we could point out the potential damage those decisions could have toward their tenancy. No longer were we fixated on the immediate payment due; getting to the bottom of the problem to achieve better and more sustainable long-term payments became our focus.
Just as these changes to our team’s approach were being embedded, the financial landscape for our tenants changed radically. We immediately decided that none of our tenants would thank us for allowing them to build rent arrears at a time of a cost-of-living crisis. If anything, our ‘quality conversations’ approach became more relevant and we started to see successes despite these difficult economic circumstances.
Performance reporting
As well as introducing our focus on quality conversations, we wanted to change the way we reported performance back to the team. Our relationship with Mobysoft was key in enabling us to do this.
Mobysoft provide us with RentSense, an invaluable account analytics platform which makes sure we only see the accounts we need to work on. By collaboratively setting up rules removing unnecessary account work, we’ve been able to place far more focus and time toward quality conversations.
In addition, the platform’s detailed analytics’ reporting and contributions from Mobysoft’s excellent customer success manager have allowed us to really improve our performance reporting. Through this, we were able to analyse times in the week when we were less productive and this feedback led to an immediate boost in team productivity.
We now share statistics fortnightly and these feed into quality assurance reviews, allowing everyone to understand how they are performing versus the rest of the team. This has also allowed us to feedback a gradual reduction in higher level debts. In the last few years, we’ve been able to focus, monitor and provide feedback on productivity, arrears progression and repeat-case recommendations, allowing greater visibility of each officer’s progress against our expectations.
An additional benefit of working with Mobysoft has been the excellent webinars the company offers. Curated by Mobysoft’s knowledgeable income-maximisation directors, these sessions have allowed different housing providers and councils to share what has (and hasn’t) worked for them. We have been proud to present at a number of these webinars as our successes have grown and there is always something new to learn from them (which can often have a direct and lasting impact on our team).
Measurable improvements
Through the many changes we have introduced, we have seen the following performance improvements:
- A 63 per cent drop in families with high-level (above £2,000) arrears (from 277 to 102). This equates to £650,000 less high-level debt, the result of which is more time for our officers to devote toward debt prevention.
- 355 fewer households in arrears.
- 79 per cent of those same tenants out of debt or with a positive movement (compared with last year).
- A significant improvement in accounts checked, with far fewer accounts being missed more than two weeks in a row.
Most significantly, our five per cent all-time high has dropped to 3.59 per cent despite the cost-of-living crisis. This puts us in the top quartile for English local authorities and ALMOs. Had we not acted to make the changes, we think that we would currently be at six per cent or above.
The team were delighted at winning the silver award for customer/tenant services at the Housing Technology 2024 awards; it is fair recognition for what has been a hugely impressive turn-around for our team.
That said, we’re far from finished when it comes to making improvements but the focus on quality conversations and excellent performance analysis will no doubt continue to be the foundations for our ongoing success.
James Terry is the housing income operations manager at Milton Keynes City Council. The council won the silver award for customer/tenant services at the Housing Technology 2024 awards.
