Member Article

Alliance Homes invests in Rentsense

Alliance Homes has chosen to invest in RentSense to help them mitigate the effects of Universal Credit. The North Somerset based social landlord will begin to deal with full Service Universal Credit in June later this year, when the benefit is introduced to Weston Super Mare’s Job Centre Plus.

The changing benefit system is posing a real threat to income collection according to Housing Service Manager Matt Hines.

“The rollout of Universal Credit and direct payments across North Somerset will impact income collection and will affect both ourselves and our tenants.”

Up to now the impact of Universal Credit has been limited due to the relatively low claimant numbers, but from June Alliance Homes are expecting to see a surge in claimants as full service is introduced.

The landlord was keen to limit the effects of ongoing welfare reform and visited several peers to see how they were using and benefitting from RentSense.

“We carried out due diligence by researching and visiting organisations that were successfully using RentSense. We needed to be sure that we were investing in a product that had demonstrable outcomes and mitigated against the impact of Welfare Reform,” commented Matt.

“With constrained resources, we anticipate that RentSense will improve capacity within the Income team, to reduce rent arrears and increase officer productivity.”

Alliance Homes should go live with RentSense in April, as the simple deployment process takes around twelve weeks.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Adrian Mills .