At its previous meeting, the Panel heard an update on the Council’s position regarding the management of Covid-related domestic rent arrears. It was agreed that the topic required more time to consider fully. The Panel is therefore provided with a further opportunity to consider the issues, raise questions and make any recommendations to Cabinet as necessary.

Tanya Bandekar, Revenue and Benefits Service Manager, and Phil McGaskill, Revenues Manager will be available at the meeting to present the report and answer any questions.

NB The report for this item is restricted.

Tanya Bandekar, Service Manager (Revenues and Benefit), and Phil McGaskill, Revenues Manager presented a report to the Panel on the Council’s management of domestic arrears during Covid.

To date, the Council was reported to be tracking along a similar trajectory to 2018, but behind 2019. In 2019 the Council had implemented a strategy of engage and persuade, which had led to one of its most successful years of arrears reduction. If the impact of money sent to the Council regarding DWP but awaiting advice on which account to credit it to, the Council’s arrears figures were doing better than in 2018.

With the opening of the courts, the Council had begun considering its approach to formal court proceedings. One area of growth in arrears related to those tenants over six months in arrears; for these tenants the intention was to begin serving notices seeking possession. Oftentimes, those not engaging with the Council’s softer efforts to address arrears less formally would do so after receiving a letter seeking possession. The time delay between serving such a notice and going to court would be six months, allowing significant time for the tenant to start addressing their arrears. It was the Council’s intention usually to seek suspended possession on terms, not evicting the tenant but giving them the opportunity to stay in the property if progress was made against the arrears.

Garage arrears had increased sharply at the start of lockdown, largely due to those wishing to surrender their garage tenancy being unable to present their keys back. However, with focus from officers these arrears had largely been cleared and were trending towards normal levels.

For the Rent Guarantee scheme, numbers were actually running at half the level of 2019.

 The Panel sought more information about enforcement and the protection of vulnerable tenants facing enforcement. The Panel were informed that the Council had a very strict code for enforcement agent behaviour and a lot of work had been devoted to finding companies with the ability to deliver on those exacting standards. One aspect of the company was their strength in using technology and training for their operatives in identifying vulnerable tenants, and the Council had actually learned on a number of occasions of vulnerabilities that were previously unknown. Complaints were very low.

The question was raised whether there was capacity to track the level of people facing arrears who have language barriers. The team was in the process of adopting a new system of recording, which would be more sophisticated and provide the opportunity to track and interrogate a lot more fields. The Panel also examined in more detail the protections for those with English as a second language.

NB There are no confidential minutes for this item.