As I read the social housing press I begin to feel that I’ve been here before.
Recently there was discussion of new measures to introduce rigour into the process prior to eviction; there was discussion about ensuring that tenants were actually seen before enforcing an eviction. When I worked as a housing officer we were required to thoroughly research our arrears cases before serving notice, let alone enforce eviction! I can recall being made to feel very inadequate because although I knew that a household had children I didn’t have their ages readily to hand when asking for agreement to serving a notice on a case of increasing arrears.
A recent question asked ‘can we ask tenants to pay their first week’s rent at signup?’ Again, it used to be required practice to have the first fortnight’s rent paid up front and only in exceptional cases to allow just one week’s rent to be paid. Certainly if the first week’s rent couldn’t be paid the keys wouldn’t be handed over.
I worry that many of the good practices of yesteryear have been forgotten and need to be re-learnt to tackle today’s housing management issues.
Posted by Peter Bird 
