duration

Location
Radisson Blu, Liverpool

Income management may look the same. It isn’t. Beneath the surface, AI, behavioural insights, tenancy sustainment and cost of living pressures are reshaping the service. Join this year’s RIEN Conference to explore these and more.

  • Read more

    Income management rarely makes the headlines. But without it, everything else becomes harder. 

    While building safety, the Consumer Standards and Awaab’s Law rightly dominate the agenda, income management remains the foundation of a financially resilient housing provider: 

    • It’s the engine room of your organisation – keeping income flowing, protecting financial viability and enabling investment in homes and services. Even small improvements in collection rates can have a major impact. 
    • It’s also one of your most important customer facing services, helping residents navigate financial hardship, sustain their tenancies and access the support they need. 

    Today’s income teams are expected to do more than collect rent. They’re balancing enforcement with empathy, working across housing, legal, financial inclusion and community services while responding to the pressures of the cost of living, welfare reform and increasingly complex resident needs. 

    At this year’s RIEN conference, HQN will get under the bonnet of income management to explore how teams across the country are adapting.  

    We’ll look at emerging tools, new thinking and practical changes, helping providers maintain strong collection performance while supporting residents who need help most. 

    Topics include: 

    • Tenancy sustainment  
    • Supporting residents through the cost of living crisis  
    • AI and digital innovation in income management  
    • Using behavioural economics and change theory to improve outcomes  
    • Delivering high performance while balancing support and enforcement.

    Who should attend this conference?
    Everyone involved in income management, rent collection, arrears, tenancy sustainment, financial inclusion, housing management, customer services, welfare support, performance, policy or service improvement.

    Key audiences include:

    • Heads of income, rents and arrears
    • Income managers and officers
    • Rent income and arrears teams
    • Tenancy sustainment and financial inclusion teams
    • Housing management teams
    • Customer service leads
    • Housing benefit and welfare reform leads
    • Performance and policy colleagues
    • Directors and senior leaders responsible for housing management, income or financial resilience.
  • Our speakers

    Kathryn Beck, HQN Associate and Income Team Leader, Sage Homes
    Kathryn is an income team leader at a for profit housing association, who has started as an Income Officer, back in 2004 at a local authority. In between, she has worked in a variety of roles such as Housing Officer, Leasehold Officer and Community Development Officer, working in new and rural communities for both local authority and housing associations. 

    The variety of roles with different organisations has given Kathryn a good insight into the bigger picture of the challenges tenants and landlords face in balancing support and income collection and the importance of partnership working. Kathryn is looking forward to working with peers to hear, share and promote best practise and strategies in the balance between support and income collection.

    Sean Scott, HQN Associate and Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income, London Borough of Camden
    With nearly 3 decades of working across Local Authorities, ALMOs and Housing Associations including G15 organisations, Sean has built extensive expertise in Housing and Property management with a strong focus on leasehold services, service charge management and income recovery.

    Sean is particularly focused on modernising services through data, digital innovation and clearer financial frameworks, while maintaining a strong customer focus. He has led a number of large-scale transformation programmes, including organisational restructures, digital system implementation and service redesigns, aimed at improving transparency, efficiency and customer experience.

    His work reflects the wider sector challenge of balancing financial sustainability with fairness and trust in leaseholder relationships.

    Karl Maple, HQN Associate and Head of Income, Financial Inclusion and Leasehold Services, Croydon Council
    Karl is a senior social housing leader with over 15 years’ experience across local government and housing associations. In his role at Croydon Council, he has driven major service improvements, achieving collection rates above 101.5% while enhancing customer outcomes.

    Karl specialises in income management, financial inclusion and service transformation, using data and resident insight to deliver person-centred services. He is a PRINCE2 Agile project manager known for collaborative leadership and transformational change.

    Jonathan Hulley, Partner, Birketts
    Jonathan is an acknowledged expert in the field of housing and leasehold management law. He qualified as a solicitor in 2003. He is also known for advising social housing providers on best practice, policy and procedure, including the consumer standards set by the social housing Regulator which housing associations have to meet.

    Mark Walker, Income Maximization Director, Mobysoft
    Mark is Mobysoft’s Income Maximisation 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 the Rent Income Excellence Network for seven years running benchmarking best practice groups in London and the South East.

    Julie Francis, Senior Financial Inclusion Officer, Liverpool City Council 
    Julie Francis is a Senior Financial Inclusion Officer in a community-based role, at Liverpool City Council. She has the pleasure of managing an exceptionally dedicated, supportive team who share a strong ethos of collaboration, empathy and empowering residents to improve their financial stability. Together, they work to maximise income and ensure people access the support they’re entitled to, partnering with family hubs, food pantries, refugee resettlement teams and Trailblazer projects. Their work has a meaningful impact across communities, strengthening financial resilience and reducing hardship. Julie brings a calm, people‑focused approach, clear communication and a commitment to fairness and positive outcomes.

    Julian Tait, CEO, Open Data Manchester
    Julian Tait is CEO and co-founder of Open Data Manchester (ODM), a Greater Manchester-based Community Interest Company working at the intersection of data, technology and civic life. He leads ODM’s work on responsible data practice, AI literacy for communities and participatory data governance — including the development of Principles for Collaborating with Residents on AI Systems, adopted by GMCA. Julian serves on the GM Digital Steering Group, GM Information Board and as Greater Manchester’s OGP Local Civil Society Contact Point. He is currently leading the GM Digital Blueprint 2027–30 and sits on the University of Manchester’s Digital Futures Strategic Advisory Board.

    Steven Johnson, Lead Behavioural Scientist, Voicescape
    Steven Johnson is a behavioural scientist with over 20 years’ experience applying behavioural insight to real-world challenges. Through Considered, he works with agencies, consultancies and in-house teams to provide behavioural science expertise across research, intervention design, evaluation and testing.

    His work spans areas including financial wellbeing, public health, sustainability, and communications, helping organisations understand how people behave in practice and design services, messages and interventions that are more likely to work. He has delivered hundreds of behavioural science projects and brings a practical, evidence-led perspective on how organisations can better support people through complex decisions and financial pressure.

    Jennifer Hornblower, Senior Financial Inclusion Officer, Liverpool City Council  
    Jennifer Hornblower is a Senior Financial Inclusion Officer at Liverpool City Council, working as part of the council’s financial inclusion team to support residents facing money pressures, hardship and vulnerability.

    Her work focuses on helping residents access the right advice and practical support, building financial resilience, and connecting people with services before difficulties escalate. Jennifer brings a local authority perspective on financial inclusion, resident support and identifying vulnerability through day-to-day income and advice work.

    Kate Hughes, Senior Advice Advocacy Manager, Trussell
    Kate’s role in the Advice Advocacy team at Trussell involves working with all levels of government, advice funders, advice providers and the wider third sector – advocating for advice that can best support people experiencing or at risk of hunger and hardship. Since the start of this year, Kate has been working on Crisis and Resilience Fund analysis and support for food banks in England focusing on the resilience services element of the fund.

    Kate has a background in delivering local frontline advice in Scotland. Since joining Trussell, she has supported the delivery and development of helpline services and worked on journey improvement to consider journeys to and through advice for people experiencing financial hardship. She has a passion for ensuring community design and the insights from people with lived experience are central to the development of services and systems.
  • Our sponsors
    Access PaySuite is a leading UK-based, FCA regulated provider of payment solutions and embedded finance, supporting businesses and organisations across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.

    Part of The Access Group, Access PaySuite works with housing associations to modernise rent collection and tenant payment journeys, helping income teams reduce arrears through direct debit, card payment and self-serve channels that make paying rent as straightforward as any other everyday payment.

    Access PaySuite supports more than 6,000 customers, processes over 250 million transactions and transacts more than £23 billion in payment volume every year.
    Voicescape is the UK’s leading provider of tenant engagement solutions, helping social housing providers harness the power of AI, machine learning, automation, behavioural insights and data science to drive enhanced operational efficiency and customer outcomes. Their evidence-based, data-driven approach enables housing teams to increase efficiency, improve service delivery and foster meaningful engagement between landlords and tenants.
    As a business, allpay prides itself on simplifying payments, positioning itself as a leading payments specialist in the UK. The company facilitates seamless collection and distribution of funds between organisations and their customers.

    Established in 1994, allpay has consistently led the way in payment aggregation, processing over £9.4 billion annually for more than 900 public and private sector entities. With over three decades of experience, allpay now manages over 66.4 million transactions each year, offering a comprehensive bill payment solution that includes all major payment methods.

    Driven by a commitment to innovation, allpay pioneered the introduction of prepaid cards within the public sector. From card design to printing and fulfilment, all processes are managed by the dedicated in-house team. The company proudly serves more than 500 housing associations (HAs) and arms-length management organisations (ALMOs), with 90% of the top 200 HAs in England and nearly 60% of all UK local authorities (LAs) choosing allpay for their bill payment services.

    What distinguishes allpay is its steadfast dedication to security and compliance. The company upholds the highest standards of PCI DSS compliance, holds various ISO certifications, maintains Bacs-approved Bureau status and is accredited by Mastercard and Visa. In essence, allpay is the preferred payment supplier for the public sector, delivering reliability, security, and efficiency in every transaction.
    Founded in 2003, Mobysoft provides data-based insight solutions to a wide range of social housing clients, supplying AI-based data analytics platforms that help landlords to improve their income-collection processes for the good of all involved. Mobysoft delivers two market-leading products RentSense and RepairSense which help keep tenants housed in a home they can enjoy and simultaneously improves rent collection for the long term good of the organisation.

    Mobysoft are HQN’s longest serving partners to the Rent Income Excellence Network (RIEN). Mobysoft has worked with members over a series of events and strategies to sustain tenancies and protect revenues, including practical roadshows, targeted roundtables and conference involvement.

     

    		 Policy in Practice is a social policy and analytics company that helps people discover and access financial support they are missing out on due to a lack of awareness, stigma and the complexity of the application process.

    They help housing providers to boost residents’ incomes, create long term sustainable tenancies and improve operational efficiency using their award-winning Better Off Platform. This is how their housing provider clients identified £187 million and increased their customer’s income by an average of £570 a month last year.
  • Programme

    10:30am Welcome and introductions 

    Kathryn Beck, HQN Associate and Income Team Leader, Sage Homes

    10:40am Income sector current challenges and opportunities 

    Sean Scott, HQN Associate and Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income, London Borough of Camden
    • The current challenges facing income collection teams 
    • What opportunities are arising from new tech and improved processes 
    • How the landscape is changing and what the future looks like.

    11:15am Motivating high-performing income teams

    Karl Maple, HQN Associate and Head of Income, Financial Inclusion and Leasehold Services, Croydon Council
    • Defining high performance
    • Importance of clear expectations, data and transparency
    • Creating a psychologically safe environment for officers to perform.
    • Practical Leadership approaches.

    11:50am Break 

    12:10pm Panel Discussion: Lessons from implementing The Crisis Resilience Fund   

    Jennifer Hornblower, Senior Financial Inclusion Officer, Liverpool City Council 
    Julie Francis, Senior Financial Inclusion Officer, Liverpool City Council  
    Kate Hughes, Senior Advice Advocacy Manager, Trussell

    The Crisis Resilience Fund (CRF) launched in April 2026 to provide emergency help for essential costs, housing payments and long-term resilience for low-income households. This panel discussion will explore the practical realities of delivery and how partnership working is central to its success. 

    1:00pm Lunch  

    2:00pm In conversation: Legal update on the Mazur case  

    Jonathan Hulley, Partner, Birketts
    • The implications of the Mazur ruling on income collection 
    • What you need to consider when carrying out legal proceedings 
    • Open floor Q&A session.

    2:25pm Behavioural economics – Nudge Theory

    Mark Walker, Income Maximization Director, Mobysoft
    • What is Nudge Theory? 
    • How it impacts us in wider society 
    • How to take Nudge Theory into income collection.

    2:55pm Break 

    3:15pm The ethics of AI in income collection 

    Kathryn Beck, HQN Associate and Income Team Leader, Sage Homes
    Mark Walker, Income Maximization Director, Mobysoft
    Steven Johnson, Lead Behavioural Scientist, Voicescape
    Julian Tait, CEO, Open Data Manchester

    Hosted by Kathryn Beck, this panel discussion will explore the ethics and legalities of using artificial intelligence to analyse resident data. You’ll hear about what’s legal, what’s ethical and what to consider when putting sensitive data into AI.

    3:55pm Final comments 

    Kathryn Beck, HQN Associate and Income Team Leader, Sage Homes

    4:00pm Close

  • Testimonials

    • Highly recommend events organised by HQN – the whole day went smoothly; the guest speakers were very informative and interesting. I have come away feeling confident and motivated within the sector, and with the ability introduce new improvements and implementations.

      Cartrefi Conwy

    • Such a great event good opportunity to get away from the day job, stop and think and listen to some great things happening in our sector and spark some ideas for things to take back to our own organisation.

      Weaver Vale Housing Trust

    • Really enjoyed the event, lots of interesting talks across various areas within the industry that all can help shape your day to day going forward.

      Fairhive Homes
  • Cancellations and substitutions

    If you are unable to attend an event or public training course, please let us know in writing (email is fine) at least 48 hours before. Please email [email protected] Otherwise, a cancellation fee of £60 plus VAT will be chargeable. If you are using a package place to attend and do not inform us within the agreed time frame, then a place will be taken to cover your non-attendance. Cancellations must be made in writing, and will be acknowledged by HQN Limited.

  • Price and booking

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    If you experience any issues when submitting your booking, please email [email protected] with the name and date of the session along with the delegate name(s), email address(es) and job title(s) and we'll process the booking for you.

Dates



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