Councillor Smith, Chair of the Housing Standing Panel presented the Panel’s recommendations on the Council’s rents performance. She cited the success of the Council’s incentive scheme for waste recycling and said that the Panel hoped that a similar approach could be taken to encourage people to pay their rent by direct debit. She explained that the Panel felt a performance indicator targeted on this issue would be a valuable monitoring tool.  She said that the Panel intended to monitor the success of any scheme that was introduced.

The Board Member said that he was pleased to accept the scrutiny recommendations and that housing officers were looking positively at scheme options.

In discussion the Board noted the following points:

·         that the Council already collected some performance data relating to Direct Debit payments and it would be relatively straightforward to adapt this to target the proportion of Council tenants paying rent by Direct Debit

·         that the Council favoured incentive scheme rather than a discount scheme so that  people who did not have access to a Direct Debit banking option were not disadvantaged

·         the need to take into account any legal constraints when devising the incentive scheme

The Board agreed to accept the Scrutiny Housing Panel recommendations:

·         Recommendation 1 – That the Council should look at ways of incentivising Council tenants to pay rent by Direct Debit, including the option of holding a prize draw.

·         Recommendation 2 – That the proportion of eligible Council tenants paying rent by Direct Debit should be a performance indicator in future years.