Operations Director Belinda Eastland, seated, with Housing Officers Ann Norvil, left, and Tracy Crook
The council used money allocated to it from the government’s Household Support Fund.
The funding follows a grant in 2023-24 and two grants totalling £34,000 last year which, together with £10,000 allocated by the housing association’s board and £1,617 from the Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust, allowed it to make more than 500 instances of support to 302 households – 67 per cent of all the association’s homes.
The support included help with rent, utility bills, food and shopping vouchers, school uniforms and other essential household items.
“The last year has been a particularly challenging year for our tenants as it included a rent increase of 7.7 per cent and a 53 week rent year and we also had a large number of tenants migrating from legacy benefits such as Housing Benefit to Universal Credit, which resulted in many having to wait for payments,” said Operations Director Belinda Eastland.
“We’re very grateful for the support of the council, together with our own budget, it has allowed our Housing Officers to target most of our tenants in some way. We helped 155 households with children, 72 pensioners and 13 households where there were people with disabilities. We were also able to assist 62 other households who were struggling but did not fit in to one of the above categories. Of the 302 households we were able to help, 38 of received multiple instances of support due to their high level of vulnerability.”
Tenants living in properties where the heating systems are more expensive to run, received help with bills, as did elderly residents in flats awaiting inefficient heating replacements. Tenants moving into our new build homes at schemes in Wiltshire and Somerset received money towards carpets.
The year was divided into a 53 week rent year for accounting purposes, but, because Universal Credit is only paid for 52 weeks, claimants have to cover the extra week, putting themselves at risk of hardship.
“We helped 56 tenants in this predicament with part of the rental shortfall paid for out of our Discretionary Support Fund,” said Mrs Eastland. “A further £650 was credited to rent accounts of tenants subject to an ‘under occupancy’ charge and to one tenant with a disability who had been sanctioned by DWP. These payments prevented households accruing housing debt and putting their tenancies at risk.
“We are a smaller association that makes it a priority to get to know out tenants and understand the challenges they face. That’s why we work so hard to apply for these funds, because we know they will make a real difference.”
She said the support it was able to provide has also benefitted the housing association. “We have managed to help tenants continue to keep paying their rent even though they are going through difficult times and we will be able to continue doing so over the next financial year,” she said.
“Last year our rent arrears were down 37 per cent year on year and the number of tenants in arrears has almost halved, saving us time and resources in monitoring and collecting rent and giving us more resources to maintain and improve our homes.”
One tenant who had received help wrote to the housing association: “Thank you, so kind, I am able to cook proper meals.” Another said: “This genuinely means so much to us during this time, thank you.”