Housing Executive owed £21m rent

The Housing Executive has been criticised for failing to collect rent arrears

The Housing Executive in Northern Ireland is owed nearly £21m in rent arrears, according to a report by the assembly's Public Accounts Committee.

The report criticised the Housing Executive's performance and said there were clear deficiencies in the body.

Chairman Paul Maskey said its failure to collect rental income had "serious implications" for social housing.

He said that without this income, the executive may not be able to provide essential services to their tenants.

"We found that the NIHE has been very slow to introduce measures designed to maximise rental income," Mr Maskey said.

"For example, a direct debit facility will not be in place for rent payments until 2010."

The Executive's Assistant Director of Housing Regeneration, Helen Walker, said it had evicted 49 people in the past year but only as a "last resort".

"I would like to remind all tenants that there is the Christmas period coming up," she said.

"This is the time when our tenants struggle and we will be contacting them about their arrears.

"(Eviction) is a last case scenario. Most of those individuals were single people who were unable or unwilling to come to arrangements with us."

Corporate targets

The report also said that only one of the executive's 73 corporate targets were in relation to rent arrears.

It said this target "simply required that the overall level of arrears did not deteriorate year-on-year" and found that the executive had only met this in the five years up to March 2007 because it had written off £10.6m of rental debt.

The report said the executive needed more comprehensive performance reporting and a more stretching set of corporate targets in relation to rent arrears.

"When examined against a broader range of relevant indicators, deficiencies in NIHE's performance can clearly be seen," it added.

"This underlines the need for more comprehensive performance reporting and a more stretching set of corporate targets in this area."

Mr Maskey said: "Until recently, the Department for Social Development's oversight of housing associations has been weak.

"More recently, the department has made progress in improving its regulatory activities.

"However, it must do more to share information and to identify and promote best practice developments across the whole social housing sector."