Between 1st April 2014 and 31st March 2015:
Most of our income came from the rent and service charges that you pay – we use this money to channel it straight back into services for you, your home and your community
Staff in our Relationship Team make sure that rent is paid on time and do what they can to help those who have difficulty paying, get back on track
Each month, between 2% and 3% of rent is uncollected. This means that we are still devoting significant resources to tackle rent arrears. The amount of rent we are able to collect affects the number of improvements we can make to our services including the number of new kitchens and bathrooms we can install.
Our Home Budgeting Officer has been working closely with tenants affected by the welfare reform - including universal credit - helping them to manage their money and make the most of their income
Running a successful Tenancy Awareness Course for 27 tenants who have breached the terms of their tenancy, either through rent arrears or through other types of breach such as antisocial behaviour (ASB).
The courses gave us the opportunity to remind tenants of their rights and responsibilities, as well as offering them advice and support
Launching an online portal to give you access to your details so you can view your account when you want to
Launching an online service that lets you book appointments with our Experience Team yourself, so that you can talk about any issues you have
We are working to keep our rent arrears levels low so that we can run effectively as a business and invest in areas that you need us to.
We will be:
Designing a ‘pre-tenancy awareness course’ to meet with potential new customers so they know what to expect when becoming a Red Kite tenant and to be clear about their responsibilities
Looking into the ‘Rental Exchange’ scheme which sees rent payments contribute towards credit ratings, to help you access more services and finance that you may not have been eligible for previously
Our team of Relationship Advisors is focussed on reducing rent arrears and supporting tenants in sustaining their tenancies.
Anonymous customer
“Deepak (our Home Budgeting Specialist) helped us to understand the situation regarding our finances and how serious it had become. With his help we were able to provide Wycombe District Council with the information they needed. Paying the rent on our own instead of having help from Housing Benefit put a big strain on our finances; however now that the Housing Benefit we were entitled to is being paid again, we can relax. We were really happy to see Red Kite provide us with this help - Deepak went to a lot of effort to help us out of the situation and we had become very worried about the arrears that had built up. Deepak was able to ensure we were back-paid for the Housing Benefit we were entitled to and that the future payments were completely sorted. I would encourage anyone who is experiencing any financial problems to contact the team for help before the problems get too serious.”
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