Rents arrears management overview

The ability to review the action status of rent arrears accounts empowers the housing organisation to develop a clear analysis of the incidence and pattern of rent arrears among their tenants. With an arrears policy defined, Civica Cx Housing will automatically compile a full list of accounts where the status of a rent balance has contravened that policy. This will mean that the account has reached a defined balance threshold to warrant an arrears action. All arrears actions are stored against each account, with specific focus given to the latest action and also the highest historical action taken. Accounts are grouped together into user defined functional units, meaning that each unit can be managed by a different officer or team, as required. Typically, a functional unit will contain a subset of arrears accounts based on the outstanding balance. Where the account balance falls (or rises) to a different threshold band, the account will then automatically move across to the corresponding functional unit. The suggested account actions dictated by the active arrears policy can be generated en bloc. These actions can then be confirmed as the right approach, overridden with an alternative action or rejected, pending further review. Based on the perceived severity of the proposed next action, each can be linked to internal authorisation levels e.g. a notice to evict can only be served with appropriate electronic sign-off. Such accounts are then denoted with the status 'Awaiting Authorisation', these being tracked through a summary dashboard which is visible to the officer managing the account and also the end user with the necessary authorisation permissions. In addition to those policy actions proposed automatically, the end user is also permitted to add an action manually, backed up by detailed procedural guidelines for frontline staff, and allowing for the exercise of some discretion in policy implementation. Any number of arrears actions can be defined and will certainly include key actions such as notice served, court application, eviction, etc. These will include strategies to emphasise proactive and preventative approaches rather than being focused mainly on reactive enforcement measures.

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

• To review the action status of rent arrears accounts
• To generate suggested account actions using an arrears policy
• To confirm suggested actions for rent arrears accounts
• To override suggested actions for rent arrears accounts
• To reject suggested actions for rent arrears accounts
• To add an action to a rent arrears account
• To view authorisation requests for rent account actions
• To authorise requested actions for rent arrears accounts