Paying Your Rent
On signing your Tenancy Agreement you have accepted
responsibility for making your rent account payments on time.
If you are unable to pay your rent or you fall into arrears please
contact the Housing Services Team immediately. We will
help you by:
- Giving you confidential help and advice
- Ensuring you apply for Housing and other welfare benefits
- Help you in completing the relevant claim forms
- Agree a repayment programme to clear your rent arrears
- Provide or refer you to a Debt Counselling Advice
agency
You can contact the Housing Services Team by phone on 01233
330688 or email the Housing Team.
You can pay your rent in many different ways, visit our
Making Payments
webpage for more information.
Action Against Tenants’ Who Don’t Pay
If you deliberately fail to pay your rent or fail to
keep to an agreed repayment programme we will undertake Court
action to recover your arrears. Court action will result in
costs charged to your rent account and you will have a County Court
Judgement against you.
A County Court Judgement will limit your ability to
secure a loan, rental agreements and credit payment choices.
A Court Order, and eviction if you breach your
payment contract, is only instigated after you have had every
opportunity to pay the outstanding sum or made a reasonable
arrangement to do so.
Why You Should Avoid Getting Behind With Your Rent
- If we evict you for rent arrears and find that you are
intentionally homeless we do not have a duty to rehouse you as
governed by Homelessness Legislation.
- If we make an application to the County Court to recover rent
arrears we will add the Court Costs to your rent account.
- Once you have a County Court Judgement against your name you
lose your security of tenure and therefore the Right to Buy, if you
are in breach of the order.
- You may not be able to transfer or mutual exchange to another
property.
- We may not let a garage to you and we may end an existing
garage tenancy if you have rent arrears.
- We will provide an honest representation of your rent account
conduct should a Building Society or another lending agent
ask for a reference subject to your agreement. If your
account is in arrears the reference may affect your ability
to secure a mortgage.
Rent Free Weeks
If your payments are up to date you can take full adavantage of
the two rent free weeks over the Christmas and New Year period. If
you have fallen behind with your payments, you can use this
opportunity to start catching up!
The Rent Free Weeks for 2009/10 are the weeks commencing 21
December 2009 and 28 December 2008.
This webpage was updated on
12/22/2009