What happens if you cannot pay my rent?
Money you owe to your landlord is called arrears. If you do not pay your rent you will get into arrears. If Housing Benefit is paying all or some of your rent and this stops, for whatever reason, you will also get into arrears.
Rent is one of the most important bills that you must pay. Not paying your rent can be very serious because you could lose your home.
How can we help you if you get in arrears with your rent?
If you get behind with your rent, your Housing Officer will be happy to work with you to stop things becoming more serious. Contact her/him as soon as possible to make a suitable agreement to repay your arrears.
We will also check that you are claiming all of the welfare benefits that you are entitled to. We can give you details of other organisations that may be able to offer you further help and support. Remember, rent arrears do not go away and the longer you leave it the more difficult it will be to sort things We are here to help you if you have difficulty paying your rent.
What happens if you ignore your arrears or don’t keep to your payment agreement?
If you make the payments that we have agreed with you then we will take no further action. But if you fail to keep to your agreement, we may have to begin court action to end your tenancy.
The first stage of court action is to serve a Notice of Seeking Possession on you. This does not mean that you have to leave your home immediately, but you would have to bring your arrears under control within the 28 day period of the notice. Only a Court Order can end your tenancy.
If you ignore the warning given by the Notice of Seeking Possession then we will begin Court action at the end of the 28 days. Court action will involve the Court Service’s costs, which we will ask the Court to pass on to you. These costs are around £400.
We will do everything we can to avoid you losing your home, but the responsibility for paying your rent is yours
Rent statements
We will send you a rent account statement every 3 months. The statement will tell you what rent you should have paid in that time and what payments we have received.
This is your record of payment, so it is important that you check them and keep these statements.
You can also check the balance on your rent account at any time by contacting your Housing Officer.
View your rent account
You can view the last ten transactions on your rent account online so you can keep up to date with your account balance. To access your account online, you will need a unique username and password. You can get these by calling us on 01772 450610 and telling us that you want to be able to view your rent account online.
