Industry News
Wates celebrates extension of its Birmingham housing repairs contract
H
ousing contractor Wates Living Space is celebrating a multi-million pound extension to its repairs and
maintenance work to 31,000 homes for Birmingham City Council. Over the past three years, its work for the
council has included 338,578 housing repairs completed, 89,829 gas services, 17,401 electrical tests and inspections and the refurbishment of 4,867 void properties. It has also spent £84.6m with local small businesses, a further £2.9m with Social Enterprises and has invested over £870,000 in training for local people. The contract extension will see this work
continue until the Spring of 2022. The company has achieved an average customer satisfaction score of 99.8 per cent, while also becoming winner of the UK Housing Awards 2018 for ‘Outstanding Approach to Repairs and Housing Maintenance’. As part of the contract extension, Wates has
made a pledge to build on its investment in education, training and employment in Birmingham. To date this has included 1,788 weeks of training and employment for local people and an investment of over £27,000 in supporting education, including career workshops at Erdington Skills Centre. Wates Living Space’s work on behalf of the
council included a flagship project to refurbish the 20-storey Barry Jackson Tower in Aston, which opened this year as a pioneering initiative to offer temporary accommodation to the city’s homeless people. David Morgan, Managing Director of Wates
Property Services, commented: “The success of our work for Birmingham City Council can be seen in the scale and quality of our housing repairs and
maintenance across the city, and particularly in the consistently high customer satisfaction scores our teams have achieved. “The true impact of this work, however, is evident in the extent of the positive impact
we have made to the lives of local people. The team in Birmingham have worked tirelessly to
find ways in which they can make a difference, whether this is in supporting students, training job-seekers or in volunteering time to help local good causes. I am extremely proud of what has been achieved and very much look forward to seeing this great work continue in the coming years.”
Report finds direct payments effective in curbing rent arrears
Private landlords are calling for payments of housing benefit to be made directly to them as the best way of preventing rent arrears and evictions. A report from the Smith Institute, commissioned
by Southwark Council has found that direct payments of benefit to landlords (rather than to tenants) contributed most to reductions in rent arrears. The report shows there has been a noticeable
decrease in the levels of arrears for those claiming Universal Credit in 2018, compared with those transitioning to Universal Credit in 2016, with tenants owing less than two weeks’ rent on average as opposed to six. It notes that “it is the earlier and increased use of Alternative Payment Arrangements, rather than
other reforms, which have contributed most to reductions in arrears levels”. The findings support the Residential Landlord
Association’s call that tenants in receipt of Universal Credit should have the right to choose whether the housing element is paid directly to their landlord, rather than into their bank account. RLA policy director David Smith said: “Our own
research finds that over half of landlords with tenants on Universal Credit have seen them fall into rent arrears in the last year. “This report demonstrates that arrears are
lower under direct payments to landlords and supports our call for the Government to give all tenants on Universal Credit the ability to choose to have the housing element paid directly to their landlord.
20 | HMM October/November 2019 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk “Many tenants feel more comfortable with
managing their finances knowing that their rent is paid and it should be up to them to be free to make that decision”. Currently, landlords can apply for an Alternative
Payment Arrangement, but only after two months of rent arrears have built up. The RLA has been campaigning for tenants who are in receipt of Universal Credit to have the right to choose whether the housing element is paid directly to their landlord. Research published for the RLA in August found
that 54 per cent of those private landlords who have let to tenants on Universal Credit in the past 12 months have seen them fall into rent arrears. They also found that it took landlords an average of almost 8.5 weeks for an APA to be arranged.
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