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.