Rents arrears maintenance overview

Housing organisations set policies and procedures which define the action to be taken when accounts fall into arrears i.e. money is owed to the organisation by the tenant. These policies must satisfy statutory and legal obligations in respect of arrears management and the recovery of arrears.

It is widely recognised that the collection of rent, including rent arrears, is essential to maximise the resources available to improve and maintain asset stock. It is therefore important that proactive steps are implemented as routine policy to prevent and minimise the build up of rent arrears, recognising that all tenants experiencing financial difficulties should be managed with sensitivity. Identifying and tracking rent arrears at the earliest opportunity enables more effective management of the situation and documented steps can be initiated to return each affected account to a credit balance position. Civica Cx Housing provides the facility to document all actions and conversations arising through the management of arrears.

Where arrears are detected, the aim is to reach an agreement with the tenant - a payment plan -  to pay off any arrears over a reasonable period of time, which is both manageable to the tenant and acceptable to the housing organisation. Legal proceedings to evict a tenant from a property are only instigated as a last resort, where there is a serious level of persistent arrears and the tenant will not make or adhere to a repayment arrangement with the housing organisation. In such circumstances, the tenant is often ordered to meet court costs and other reasonable legals expenses.

An arrears management policy typically reflects a number of key objectives:

• The efficient collection of rent and associated charges
• To increase a tenant's ability to pay rent, working smarter to manage debt and to reduce arrears
• Making realistic arrangements for the repayment of arrears at the earliest opportunity
• Informing tenants of the consequences of not clearing arrears or keeping to repayment arrangements.

Arrears recovery is based on a staged process of escalating actions, with each stage linked to timescales that are achievable for all parties. Arrears balances are monitored frequently to identify cases where arrangements have been broken, allowing for prompt follow-up action. The policy is defined within Civica Cx Housing as a series of actions and outcomes, that are triggered based on specific arrears conditions having been met. Any number of significant actions can be flagged as 'key', ensuring they are given sufficient focus. Based on the perceived severity of the proposed next action, each can be linked to internal authorisation levels e.g. a notice to evict cannot be served without appropriate electronic sign-off. Civica Cx Housing can be configured to automatically propose actions based on the intrinsic rules of the active policy; these can be accepted, overridden or rejected at the discretion of the end user.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of rents arrears maintenance, including:

• To add a rent arrears action
• To add a user display field to a rent arrears action
• To remove a user display field from a rent arrears action
• To add a new rent arrears policy
• To clone a rent arrears policy
• To test the outcome of a rent arrears policy
• To assign a conditional expression to a rent arrears policy
• To assign a conditional action to a rent arrears policy
• To assign a conditional end route to a rent arrears policy
• To define the escalation path for a rent arrears policy
• To add a rent arrears account priority