1. GWSF Annual Conference: 17/11/17
Preparing for Universal Credit
Brian Gannon, Head of Housing,
Thenue Housing Association

2. Outline of Presentation
What have Thenue HA being doing to prepare for Universal Credit?
Discuss how we have changed our approach to service delivery and income collection in advance of Universal Credit.
Why……because based on evidence in Full Service areas, UC will significantly reduce our rental income, and significantly increase our workload.

3. What will happen to rental income under UC?
Prediction?
Evidence so far from Full Service Areas
Evidence from Landlords in Full Service areas suggest we can expect our Rent Arrears will increase by between 1 & 2%.
But we won’t know full impact until legacy benefit cases move to UC?
Also, what impact will new Scottish Social Security measures have?
Evidence to Westminster Welfare Reform Committee on Landlords in Full Service areas showed:
On average 80% of tenants on UC were in arrears compared to 26% of all tenants
36% increase in overall arrears reported by HAs in one full service area.
Between £130k and £260k.

5. UC and the “Scottish Flexibilities”
New claimants will be able to make these choices (after they receive their first payment of UC).
Existing claimants from Jan 18.
1. Payment Frequency
Option of payment twice monthly
Good for tenant, what impact on landlord?
2. Housing Costs paid to landlord
Good for us if significant number request this.
We have no control over this. Tenant has to initiate this.
Landlords cannot request payment to landlord unless over 2 months arrears and then MPTL is method.

6. Thenue HA & Universal Credit
About 57 current cases (“Live Service”)
Full Service not until September 2018.
Our UC Strategy has been about meeting the challenge of a potential “income down-costs up” scenario.

7. What approaches are Thenue taking to meet the challenge of UC?
Important for us to understand what the impact on our cash flow and bad debt is likely to be? – the days of collecting 99% of your income will be over!
Build extra capacity into our teams
Become more efficient by stripping out mundane and inefficient tasks.
Reviewed our rent collection methods
Made the case for investment in staff and software when we can demonstrate a net benefit to Thenue.
“Nudge” our customers on to more efficient digital service channels.

8. Universal Credit – A Key Driver for Digital Services
How do we collect that additional rental income without significantly increasing overall staff numbers and costs?
Key aim is to use digital efficiencies to redeploy staff to Income Maximisation and support our more vulnerable tenants.
29% of our rent comes from working age tenants on HB who are likely to move on to UC.
55% of Thenue’s rental income currently comes direct from Housing Benefit.

9. Impact of UC on Thenue Housing

11. What have Thenue done so far to mitigate future UC Impact?
Set up specialist Income Maximisation Team (with Financial Inclusion Officers within this team).
Aim to have our Current Rent Arrears as low as possible prior to UC roll-out
Maximise income by improving rent collection approach
Invested in FI staff who generate more rental income than they cost.
Used Predictive Analytics to reduce Rent Arrears caseload
Implemented Thenue’s Digital Strategy to deliver efficiencies from online services & supporting tenants with DWP’s Digital by Default agenda.

12. Specialist or Generic Housing Management Teams?
At Thenue we took the view that UC meant that we needed to ensure that Housing Officers were 100% focussed on rent collection.
We did this by transferring generic Housing Officers to a new Income Maximisation Team.
This team is trained to be specialists in UC.
This Team has also had a very positive impact on Rent Arrears.

13. Impact on our Rent Arrears in advance of UC
% Current Rent arrears
2014
4.31%
% Current Rent Arrears
2015
4.01%
2016
3.03%
2017
2.37%
2% decrease in 3 years
(£240k).

14. Change in Rent Collection Methods in last 2 years
Overall increase in rent transactions
28%
Direct Debit
60%
(+£600k)
Mobile App
94%
Debit Card
22%
Callpay
-5%

15. Investing in Financial Inclusion Services
Income Gain for Tenants
Income Gain for Thenue
Our FI team led to a £1.42m gain in income for customers of our Association in the last financial year!
But what is the impact of a Financial Inclusion Team on the income of the housing association?
Monitored the direct impact of FI activity on rental income to Thenue.
Compared the change in a customer’s rent account when we first engaged with the tenant, with the balance on the account when we completed our Financial Inclusion support.

16. Income Gain To Thenue of FI Officers Activity.
Period
01/01/17 to 24/8/17
No of Cases
Number resolved
Court actions avoided
NOP’s not issued
Arrears at start of case
Arrears at closes of case
Difference
160
133
118
110
£161,438
£72,079
£89,359
Full year cost of 2 Financial Inclusion Officers Approx. £70k
– Net Income Gain in 8 months £29k.

17. Building Capacity into Our Teams -Rent Sense
Thenue are investing in Mobysoft’s Predictive Analytics software Rent Sense to help prepare for and manage this additional UC workload.
By using Rent Sense to identify only those cases which will require arrears action, we significantly reduce the number of cases presented to an Income Max Officer.
It is estimated that this can save us the equivalent 1.3FTE Income Max Officer in workload and a reduction in total arrears of 16.5%.

18. UC & Digital by Default DWP expect 80% of claims to be made online
Each claimant to have an online account
Journal requires updated online by the claimant any time there are changes in circumstances (including annual rent increase!).
How can we support tenants with this move to digital and how big a challenge will this be for social housing?

19. Households with home internet access by Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 20 per cent most deprived areas
Deprivation is clearly a factor affecting internet access, although most deprived areas have higher internet access than lowest income bands?

20. Households with internet access at home by tenure
Clearly being a social housing tenant is a greater negative factor than deprivation!

21. Change in Internet Access Among Thenue Tenants
57% who we hope wont phone or visit us to access our services!

22. GWSF Digital Inclusion Toolkit
Refresh, to support landlords with the business case for investing in digital inclusion and digital services

23. Thenue’s Digital Strategy
Our Digital Strategy sets out how Thenue will:
maximise our residents access to the internet through supporting and encouraging them to go online, and
at the same time drive forward our Business Objectives of efficiently delivering more of our services and processes in a digital/online way.
Key Strategic Objective: To support Tenants who require to make online claims for Universal Credit, and access other public services.

24. Digital Services @ Thenue
Online Housing Services will lead to efficiency gains and mitigate impact of UC by freeing up resources.
The UK Government’s Digital Efficiency Report suggested that transactions online can already be 20 times cheaper than by phone, 30 times cheaper than postal and as much as 50 times cheaper than face-to-face

25. Thenue 24/7 Online Services
2 approaches (An App and a Web Portal) with a common ingredient – full integration with our housing system (Aareon QL) to enable 24/7 services.
Some requests have no involvement by staff at all – all system generated!

26. 1st Touch Self Service Customer App
We went Live with Self Service on 14th February 17 and now have over 450 tenants using the App, which has a positive impact on workload.
We have a target of 25% of Thenue tenants (700) to be registered by March 18
98% of new users give the App a positive rating (60% were very positive).
Developing an easy “one click” rent payment method through our App with Allpay.

27. Who is Using the App? Age Range No of app users % of app users
% of Thenue tenants in age range 18
67%
37%
122 97 94
33%
63%  17
75+ 5
Grand Total
353
100%
100% 

28. Investing in Mobile Working For Thenue Staff
Mobile Working can lead to significant potential workload savings to assist with freeing up resources for UC.
Use of mobile working software (fully integrated with our housing system) and mobile devices, avoid staff having to print off forms etc. before going out on visits and manual form filling when on site.
Also avoids subsequent manual entry by staff in housing system on return to the office.

29. Low Cost Broadband / Wifi in Tenant’s Homes?
With DWP‘s Digital by Default, having wifi at home will assist tenants on Universal Credit.
Some tenants however find existing packages unaffordable or don’t want to have to take a landline or won’t get credit to sign up to a contract.
Thenue looking to provide this with both a new build and an existing block of flats.
Cost will be covered by adding a new Rent factor/points – Wifi Service to the rent.

30. Low Cost Wifi Infrastructure: 2 pilot projects
Thenue’s Wifi Offer:
Costs to tenants will be £1 per week for a fibre broadband service that will enable streaming up to 7Mb/s.
This is more than enough for HD video services such as Netflix and Amazon Instant Video as they recommend 5Mb/s for full HD.
We will provide full package at both of these properties of wifi, tablet lending service, digital skills support and online housing services.
Existing Block – 25 flats
New Build Development – 49 flats

31. Preparing for UC: Recommendations
1. Workload will significantly increase so aim to become more efficient in everything you do to free up resources and redirect them to supporting tenants on UC 2. Best way to become more efficient - invest in digital technology – with the the added bonus that you can offer better 24/7 services to tenants 3. Maximise your income by reviewing rent collection methods 4. Aim to get your arrears as low as possible in advance of UC as they will certainly rise once you move to full service. 5. Consider investing in extra resources if you can prove that the income gain outweighs the cost .
If 60% of tenants are online why would you not offer online services.

32. Questions?