Dear Mr Kirby

 

Thank you for your email dated 1 April 2019; we have treated this as a Freedom of Information request.

 

You have asked for the following information; please see our responses below in red:

 

1a) The number of Universal Credit claimants currently in rent arrears on their local authority-owned home; 536

 

1b) The combined value of all these arrears. – To clarify the response £12,113.10 owed following Universal Credit application. This group of customers have arrears in total of £542,522.27

 

2a) The number of Housing Benefit claimants currently in rent arrears on their local authority-owned home; Assuming this is number of people on HB – Those on full Housing Benefit – 4,580 and those on partial Housing Benefit – 637

 

2b) The combined value of all these arrears. There is currently no report detailing this so currently no information available on this, although we are working on one for the future.

 

3) The total amount of rent, in £, which was owed but never paid by claimants of Universal Credit for local authority-owned dwellings since January 1 2013 – Universal Credit went into full service in Barnet on 16 May 2018. Our performance with pure Universal Credit debt stands at 12K

 

4) For each municipal year since 2013/14 and including 2018/19 to date, the number of evictions per year of households in receipt of Housing Benefit (separate figures by year please);

5) For each municipal year since 2013/14 and including 2018/19 to date, the number of evictions per year of households in receipt of Universal Credit (separate figures by year please).

 

Year Number of evictions carried out No. of those in receipt HB No. of those in receipt of UC
2014/15 13 Not Available Not Available
2015/16 17 Not Available Not Available
2016/17 17 2 0
2017/18 15 1 0
2018/19 15 3 1

 

We have collected the data on 2016/17 to date by carrying out a manual exercise on those evictions who were in receipt of Housing Benefit or Universal Credit. Moving forward this will be captured and reported onto our Business Intelligence system. We cannot breakdown the evictions where Housing Benefit/Universal Credit is in payment for 2014/15 & 2015/16.

Your rights

If you are unhappy with the way your request for information has been handled, you can request a review by emailing Talk2Us@barnethomes.org and marking it as an appeal for the attention of the Data Controller.

If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or complaint, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF (telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45; website: www.ico.gov.uk).

There is no charge for making an appeal.

Kind regards

 

Carly Williamson                         

Complaints and Information Manager