Rent arrears

What to do if you have difficulties paying your rent

There are many reasons why you may from time to time have problems paying your rent. Examples might include:

• a new baby
• redundancy or change of job resulting in less income 
• separation / divorce from your partner
• an unexpected large bill

What happens if I have difficulty paying my rent?

If you are having trouble paying your rent, please contact the office as soon as possible. We have many ways we can support our customers to get back on track with their payments.

If you get into rent arrears

If you have any problems paying your rent please contact us immediately.  We understand that occasionally people do have difficulties such as those described above, and our staff are trained to give advice and help.  For example they can make an agreement with you to pay your arrears in stages at amounts that you can afford over a specific period of time, or put you in touch with other organisations that can help.

If you do not contact us as soon as you start having difficulties paying your rent we will contact you.  We will usually send you a couple of reminder letters. If you do not respond to us we will then start legal action against you to recover the debt. This not only causes a lot of stress and worry, but could also result in court costs being awarded against you.

To start the legal process we will serve you with A Notice of Seeking Possession. This document will tell you why we are starting legal action. If you still do not come to a satisfactory arrangement with is after this has been served, we will contact the courts and ask for a court hearing date to be set. You will be invited to attend the court and explain to the judge why you have not been paying your rent. The judge will then decide whether or not to set up a Court Order for you to repay the rent arrears plus your weekly rent  to us. 

If you do not stick to the terms of the Court Order we will go back to court and ask the Judge to consider evicting you.  If this happens you will be made homeless, and  will need to arrange accommodation for you and your family. The council does not usually re-house people who have been evicted for rent arrears.

If you would like to discuss your situation further then please email the office on info@hhs.org.uk, alternatively you can call us on 01223 315036.