Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has reduced its arrears by £66,000 since lockdown, with a change in approach and using RentSense.
Many social landlords experienced an increase in arrears due to COVID and lockdown, especially in the early months.
However, GCH appear to have bucked the trend, and its immediate priority was the safety and wellbeing of their customers.
Becky Hayward, Income Collection and Tenancy Sustainment manager at Gloucester City Homes, commented: “We stopped all enforcement at lockdown – we wanted to speak to every customer to understand what they needed and what they wanted, and what we could do to help with their situation.
“In income, all the standard letters and escalation stopped – no letter ones or twos and so forth have been sent.
“All communication has been personalised and addressed the individual situation.
“The personal approach has been critical,” Hayward said.
“Our customers have responded really well – whereas before they might have avoided us or their situation, many have spoken with us.”
Throughout lockdown, RentSense has directed the officers to the tenants in most need of support and helped them manage their Universal Credit cases effectively.
This performance is on top of GCH reducing its arrears in the last financial year by 21.3%.
“RentSense enables the team do preventative work as well as manage their arrears cases,” said Hayward.
“So, they look at and work on accounts at risk of falling into arrears, or those that may transfer from Housing Benefit to Universal Credit.
“This has really helped the organisation and you can see the improvement in performance.
“Arrears were 2.43% in March 2019, then at the end of March 2020 arrears had fallen to 1.91%.”
Mobysoft director Paul Evans added: “All credit to Becky and the team for their incredible performance over the last 18 months.
“The support they have showed their customers is reflected in these figures.”
Image credit: ZeedMedia/Shutterstock
This is a sponsored article from Housing Digital stakeholder Mobysoft
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