With four in five local authorities currently reporting a rise in rent arrears and one in 50 residents in London now classified as homeless or living in temporary accommodation, the impact of the cost-of-living crisis is taking its toll on the poorest households.

Income and tenancy sustainment teams across the country are inundated with requests for help but some of the issues are complex. With the expectation that the money keeps coming in, how can teams strike a balance between providing meaningful support to those that need it and ensuring rent arrears are kept to a minimum?

Is the ‘collecting with care’ approach we saw during the pandemic more relevant than ever or do housing providers need to change tack? If so, what does this look like?

This year’s RIEN conference will explore how housing providers are doing their best to maximise income while sustaining tenancies by supporting residents in different ways. We’ll look at some of the different approaches organisations are taking, as some continue their ‘collecting with care’ approach while others start to take a firmer approach to enforcement – with the eviction ban set to finish at the end of September.

We’ll also be looking at the wider picture. Has the shortage of social housing and the cost of renting led to an affordability crisis that goes beyond our current tenant base? Are shared owners and leaseholders also at risk?

We’ll be be forecasting what’s in store for the winter of 2023/24, predicting what impact the rent increase for 2024/25 could have and asking whether universal credit and welfare benefits are sufficient. We’ll also be hearing about the latest income analytics and AI technology entering the housing sector.

Key sessions:

• Horizon scanning – the economic outlook for the UK for winter 2023 and beyond
• Maximising income, sustaining tenancies – how organisations are keeping arrears down while minimising enforcement action
• The future of welfare support
• Planning for the 2024/25 rent increase
• Managing complex cases – supporting people with vulnerabilities to stay in their homes
• What the new consumer standards and Tenant Satisfaction Measures mean for income teams
• The role of social landlords in providing cost-of-living support
• The latest payment trends
• The latest income analytics and AI technology.

10.30 Chair’s welcome and introductions

• • Damian Roche, Operations Director, HQN

10.35 Horizon scanning and planning for 2024/25

• • Emma Turay, Assistant Director of Regulation and Policy, Notting Hill Genesis

  • Tim Brown, Associate, HQN

  • Damian Roche, Operations Director, HQN

11.05 Steps to set you up for success

• • Mark Walker, Income Maximisation Director, Mobysoft

  • Elaine Middleton, Strategic Account Director, Mobysoft

11.25 Break 

11.35 Staff recruitment and retention and the professionalism agenda

• • Gareth Roebuck, Income Services Manager, Yorkshire Housing

12.00 ‘Holding on to home: tenancy sustainment in social housing’ – some emerging findings

• • Paul Hickman, Professor of Housing and Social Policy, Sheffield Hallam University

12.25 The Future of Payments

• • Vicky Lynch, PayPoint

12.40 Harnessing the power of AI and ML to transform the way landlords manage rent arrears

• • Peter Hudson, Sales Director, Voicescape

  • Ste Lawrence, Sector Lead – Housing, Voicescape

12.55 Using data to understand customers

• • Tom Clarke, Consultant – Housing Lead, CACI

13.20 Lunch 

14.20 Monmouthshire’s whole organisation approach including Betty the bot and impact measures

• • Sian Nicholas, Head of Neighbourhoods, Monmouthshire Housing

  • Clare Evans, Income Officer Monmouthshire Housing

14.45 State of the nation

• • Louise Clark-Martin, DWP

15.05 Maximising income, sustaining tenancies pre tenancy and preventative work

• • Ella Hewitt, Income Manager, Lancaster City Council

  • Lisa Herbert, Housing Support Officer, Lancaster City Council

15.25 How Shefflied City Council are supporting residents through the cost-of-living crisis

• • Dean Peaker, Service Manager, Sheffield City Council

15.50 The latest income analytics and AI technology from MRI Software

• • Lloyd Edwards, Solution Architect, MRI Software Ltd

16.10 Closing remarks from the Chair

• • Damian Roche, Operations Director, HQN

16.10 Networking Opportunities

About MRI Software

MRI Software logo (PRNewsfoto/MRI Software)

MRI Software is a leading provider of web-based solutions for housing associations and local authorities in the UK and Ireland. Through its comprehensive suite of customer-focused products and applications they deliver flexibility, choice and scale to more than 850 social housing clients in the region.

Over the past two years MRI have worked with HQN at a number of events and consulted with members as part of resident led and provider led focus groups to drive findings for the Resident Voice Index research. The Resident Voice initiative is a long-term project to gather anonymised survey responses from people living in social housing in the UK about how they feel about their homes and local surroundings. These short surveys are designed to provide policy makers and housing providers with the information they can use to improve neighbourhoods and communities.

About Mobysoft

Mobysoft works in partnership with the housing sector and provides a software solution, RentSense, that helps 170 social landlords, and over 25 in Scotland, sustain more tenancies and help more tenants out of debt.

RentSense is designed around algorithms and predictive analytics, so it can accurately project which tenants may or may not pay their rent. Independent research by data science company, QuantSpark, found that on average RentSense helps its customers achieve the following in year one:

• Reduce the number of tenants in debt by 11.5%
• Reduces the average arrear by 8.17%
• Reduces evictions by 8.9%
• RentSense typically delivers an average return on investment within 4 months.

Mobysoft boasts a high customer retention rate of 97% over the last two years.

Damian Roche, Operations Director, HQN

Damian began his career working in homelessness and housing advice before moving into housing management. He has over 20 years’ experience at senior level in a variety of housing organisations, including local authorities and housing associations. For much of the last decade, Damian was Director of Customer Experience at Accent, with responsibility for customer facing services, including tenancy and estates management, leasehold services and repairs and maintenance, to over 4700 homes.

Emma Turay, Assistant Director of Regulation and Policy, Notting Hill Genesis

Emma works at Notting Hill Genesis ensuring that the organisation is robust in terms of regulatory and legislative requirements for Rents and Service Charges. She is also responsible for the development of automated bespoke databases to increase efficiencies and manage compliance risks. Emma has led on the development of Rents & Service Charge systems designed to provide a platform to complete work compliantly, increase data integrity and provide insights for future decision making. Emma has over 15 years’ experience in the sector has lead on implementing an annual rent compliance conference and sector 2021 publication of the “Complying with the Rent Standard”.

Tim Brown, Associate, HQN

Tim has extensive knowledge of social housing allocations. He played a major role in the 1990s in the development of what is now referred to as choice-based lettings. Subsequently he has been involved in the review and evaluation of over 30 allocations schemes in the UK. He has also contributed to government research as well as co-producing good practice guides for the Chartered Institute of Housing and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. A number of governments in Western Europe have commissioned Tim to review allocations eg France, the Republic of Ireland and Sweden. He currently produces HQN’s allocations toolkit which is updated monthly.

Sian Nicholas, Head of Neighbourhoods, Monmouthshire Housing

Sian has worked the Housing and Communities Sector for 22 years with a career spanning Resident Engagement, Community Development & Regeneration, Support and Income Maximisation, Tenancy Management, and Income Management.  Passionate about innovation and prevention, Sian is keen try anything new to solve a dilemma.  Sian recently led the team through HQN accreditation and is working on ways that MHA can use automation and analytics to make the Income Recovery easier in the context of a cost-of-living crisis.

Clare Evans, Income Officer Monmouthshire Housing

Clare has been an Income and Engagement Officer at MHA for the last 5 years. With an exceptional track record of income recovery, Clare thrives by applying her experience in social care and engagement in her income patch. Clare, along with the rest of the income team work in a trauma informed way to find the best way to support some of our most vulnerable tenants to engage with us and make affordable payments as well as using all available resources to offer practical support. Clare leads on our Money Talks tenant engagement forum to gain feedback from tenants about how the income service is delivered.

Ella Hewitt, Income Manager, Lancaster City Council

Ella is speaking on behalf of Lancaster City Council. Ella joined the Council in January 2023 as an Income Management Officer before being successful in applying for the Income Manager position in July. In the years before joining the Council, Ella worked in local Citizens Advice, initially as a generalist advisor, before completing her CertMAP training through Staffordshire University to become a qualified Money Advisor. Common belief amongst colleagues when departing Citizens Advice, was that she was going over to the dark side, yet Ella could see the proactive work that Lancaster City Council were doing with their tenants and was keen to be a part of this. Leading the team, now gives her the opportunity to share her knowledge and ensure that tenants are well supported and have a full range of support available.

Gareth Roebuck, Income Services Manager, Yorkshire Housing

Gareth has worked in social housing for over 30 years for a variety of different local authorities, ALMO’s and Housing Associations across the North of England across most aspects of the housing management function.

He’s been at Yorkshire Housing for the last 6 years managing the income team working across 17 different local authorities and the challenges that presents. He has been involved with a number of projects installing new ways of working and software systems.

Away from work, he is a huge fan of live music and has now attended over 1,000 live events. His weekends are taken up with walking in the hills around Yorkshire and the Peak District with his wife, or watching his two grown up sons playing rugby, football and cricket.

Tom Clarke, Consultant – Housing Lead, CACI

Tom leads CACI’s work supporting Housing Associations with data-driven decision making. They help providers use data and insights more effectively to engage with customers and deliver the right services to the right people.

Mark Walker, Income Maximisation Director, Mobysoft

Mark is Mobysoft’s Income Maximization Director supporting Mobysoft’s customer base to maximise their performance through a range of activities and initiatives. Mobysoft is a sector leading data analytics company specializing in providing solutions to drive down arrears, help social housing tenants out of debt and transform tenant engagement.

Previous to joining Mobysoft, Mark was Director for Customer Accounts at Optivo (now Southern Housing) covering off all tenures of Income Collection, Lettings/On-boarding and Service Charge administration.

Previous to that Mark was Head of Income for Optivo and Amicus Horizon leading teams using forward thinking technology and a customer first approach to drive down arrears and support thousands of households out of indebtedness. During this time, Amicus Horizon were the first G15 organisation to be awarded HQN’s Income Management Accreditation.

Previously, Mark was a practioner/associate at RIEN for 7 years running benchmarking best practice groups in London & the South East.

Elaine Middleton, Strategic Account Director, Mobysoft

Elaine has spent the last 17 years working in the housing sector in a range of roles – from customer experience and marketing, through to business development and communications.

Having worked for a Midlands-based housing association, and at data specialist Housemark, Elaine has experience of working with residents, regulators, and senior leadership teams, and understands the complexities, challenges and opportunities social housings brings.

At Mobysoft, Elaine leads their strategic customer partnerships. In this role she delivers insight, understanding and support to ensure their customers boost productivity and performance across income management and revenue collection. She’s also a key champion for change, leveraging customer feedback, sector insights and latest technology innovations to influence what’s now and next for Mobysoft.

Lloyd Edwards, Solution Architect, MRI Software Ltd

With over 20 years’ experience in the Social Housing sector, Lloyd has worked across both housing providers and technology companies, so has a deep understanding of departmental needs and how organisations are trying to achieve the best use of the applications they have in place. At MRI, Lloyd specialises across a number of Housing, Digital and Finance solutions that include income collection functionality. On daily basis he is working with housing providers in order to understand those organisations concerns and struggles around rent collection and arrears processing and how MRI solutions can help to efficiencies and add value for those organisations.

Lisa Herbert, Housing Support Officer, Lancaster City Council

Lisa is a Household Support Officer at Lancaster City Council. She acts as key worker for referred tenants, being responsible for their needs assessments, action plans, reviews and key working sessions enabling them to move towards independence. She will act as an advocate, mediator, and negotiator in sometimes challenging situations, maintaining communication with our tenants and other agencies. Lisa has extensive experience in working with vulnerable and isolated members of the community and joins Ella, the Income Manager to deliver a presentation on behalf of Lancaster City Council.

Paul Hickman, Professor of Housing and Social Policy, Sheffield Hallam University

Paul is Professor of Housing and Social Policy at Sheffield Hallam University. Over the last thirty years he has conducted research on a range of subjects including: tenant participation in the social and private rented sectors; the impact of welfare reforms, including Universal Credit, on both landlords and tenants; Housing Benefit; and the lived experiences of poverty. He has a particular interest in tenancy sustainment in social housing and has led a number of studies in this area. These include the on-going ‘Holding on to home’ study for the Nuffield Foundation. The study pays particular attention to identifying the causes of rent arrears, as this is the main reason why tenancies fail. By exploring the behaviours and experiences of tenants and landlords, the research will provide evidence and guidance which, it is hoped, will help landlords to develop and improve their approaches to tenancy sustainment.

The study team is multi-disciplinary involving researchers with backgrounds in housing, social policy, economics, and psychology. The research is mixed-methods, comprising: a tenant survey; in-depth interviews with tenants and ‘stakeholders’; a tenant diary-keeping exercise; conversation analysis of landlord/ tenant communications; documentary/ secondary data analysis; and, rent account analysis. Data collection is taking place in four case study landlords in England: East Riding of Yorkshire Council; Stockport Homes; Southern Housing; and, whg (Walsall Housing Group). More information about the ‘Holding on to home’ study can be found at: https://holdingontohome.org/

Dean Peaker, Service Manager, Sheffield City Council  

Dean has worked in Housing Management at Sheffield City Council for the last 30 years. Although this has included covering most aspects of Housing related services, Dean has specialised in income management and financial inclusion over recent years.

Dean’s team has led on the Council’s response to supporting tenants through the current financial climate, combining the task of ensuring tenants have access to appropriate support where needed, but that rent is collected and the HRA is protected.

Louise Clark-Martin , Social Rented Sector Lead, Universal Credit Programme Stakeholder Engagement Team, DWP

Louise is a senior leader within the Department for Work and Pensions Universal Credit (UC) Programme, Stakeholder Engagement Team. She is the national Social Rented Sector lead and alongside her wider team Louise engages more broadly with stakeholders from national welfare advisory and support services. Louise and her colleagues are leading successful co-working through developing strong stakeholder communities to raise awareness of Move to UC, inform the DWP approach to the Move to UC journey and make enhancements to the Landlord Portal.

Louise has been in the Civil Service for 25 years working across a range of areas where she has developed diverse knowledge of service delivery.

When away from work Louise loves to travel with her family. She is also a bookworm and enjoys historical novels (preferably combined with travel somewhere warm).

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