Cadwyn, Hafod and Cardiff Community housing associations have signed with Housing Partners in order to protect their combined 9,000 households from the effects of universal credit and welfare reform.
Housing Partner’s Insight solution, which collates information from the landlord’s housing management system and combines it with external data gathered from hundreds of third-party sources, is helping to address any gaps between the services landlords provide and what their tenants need. The Insight software gathers data in a secure way from a number of sources, including Experian, and the intuitive visual segmentation of the results allows the housing providers to quickly see which tenants need extra support.
Andrew Bateson, director of operations, Cadwyn Housing Association, said, “Insight can help us to better understand how we tailor our services for the benefit of tenants. With Insight, we will now be able to make proactive, more informed decisions which will drive efficiencies and focus our resources more effectively.”
The three housing providers have changed their approach to rent collection, with a shift from enforcement to doing their utmost to support sustainable tenancies, alongside the business case that evictions lose on average eight weeks of rent per tenant.
Richard McQuillan, head of housing services, Hafod Housing Association, said, “Insight exactly fits with our philosophy of tenant sustainability and helping us to learn more about our tenants. Insight is being used by a number of our teams and it’s already been embedded into their day jobs. We can also now run pre-tenancy financial assessments on all new tenants, something which was almost impossible to do before.”
Deborah Harrington, community and support services manager, Cardiff Community Housing Association, said, “Part of our strategy is to move away from a reactive arrears process to one that is far more proactive and preventative. Insight allows us to identify cases of high financial distress so that we can offer support and interventions at the earliest opportunity, even before the first rental payment is missed.”
