The rent. It cannot be ignored!

We would like to thank everyone who pays their rent regularly and on time!
Remember that your rent goes towards paying for the services we provide, in particularly maintaining your home.

The rent. A fact of life

Most of us owe money to people or organisations some of the time: bills are a fact of life. Occasionally we may find ourselves overwhelmed by debts, and cannot see a way of paying them all. Don’t ignore the problem – get help. When you get in touch with our office, we will be able to give you some useful contacts and relevant literature.

Don’t forget that your rent must come first. There is really is no point looking to clear debts with other creditors if you have already lost your home.

Paying your rent

If you are having difficulty paying your rent, you should contact us as soon as possible. If we don’t know that there is a problem, we can’t help you. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. Early contact makes a difficult situation easier to deal with. We are here to help, really we are.

You can ask us for a rent statement (showing the rent charge and your payments, week by week) at any time.

To make rent arrears more manageable, we can make agreements with you to enable you clear your rent arrears by regular instalments. You must make every effort to keep to the agreement to avoid legal proceedings.

Sometimes things go wrong …

Sadly, evictions are a fact of life. We never undertake them willingly but occasionally where a tenant chooses not to engage with us and is persistent in non-payment of rent or other serious tenancy breaches, we can and do evict people. If you are evicted because of the non-payment of rent the local authority might well consider that you have made yourself intentionally homeless and so have no duty to rehouse you. This would mean looking for a new home in the private sector. Not only do private landlords undertake rigorous credit checks but rents levels can easily be as much as four or five times the monthly rent that LSHA charges.

Not only do former tenants lose their home but they will also have a County Court Judgement (CCJ) registered against them until all rent arrears are cleared. This will have a serious impact on the persons credit rating.

Please avoid being taken to court and evicted by making arrangements to pay your rent and pay off your arrears.

We will send you a statement of rent four times a year. We advise you to always check whether all the payments have been processed correctly and if there are any discrepancies, please contact us, so that we can investigate that further. If you are behind with your rent, we will send you a text message to remind about that.

WAYS TO PAY YOUR RENT:

Bank Standing Order
Set up a standing order at your bank giving our details:

Barclays Bank plc;
Sort code: 20-65-90;
Account No: 50532851
(use your surname and a property code as a reference – you will find this on your statement)

DEBT ADVICE
If you are struggling with debt act quickly and contact us. We will do whatever we can to help. Alternatively you can obtain advice from one of the following organisations:

Legal Services Commission

provides free information direct to the public on a range of common legal problems; phone: 0845 345 4345

Citizens Advice Bureau

Southwark Council: 0344 499 4134

Advice UK

A network of local advice centres. To find your nearest centre phone: 020 7407 4070

National Debtline: 0808 808 4000

Tax Credit Helpline: 0345 300 3900