Swan Housing: Tackling discrepancies

In 2019, Swan Housing marked its 25th Anniversary; 25 years of striving to help as many people as possible to have somewhere to feel at home. In order to achieve this goal, it is crucial to ensure that the right people are in the right homes and where tenancy discrepancies occur, to make those homes available to tenants awaiting a home.

MRI Tenancy Analytics, our powerful tenancy management solution, draws on multiple internal and external sources of data to provide one simple, verified view of the facts, giving landlords clarity over who is living in their properties. One year on from our previous look at how Swan had been using Tenancy Analytics, we’re investigating its progress with the solution for tackling tenancy discrepancies within housing stock.

Tenancy and Fraud Officers at Swan Housing use Tenancy Analytics on a daily basis, checking tenancy discrepancies and deceased records; with automated monthly updates, data is regularly being refreshed, so officers know they have the most up-to-date information. Tracy Kinton, Tenancy and Fraud Officer at Swan Housing tells us, “Our first port of call is always Tenancy Analytics.”

Repossessing Properties

There are often discrepancies between Swan’s housing management system and Tenancy Analytics, Tracy tells us, and it is through Tenancy Analytics that they are afforded a clear view of the true situation. Property succession can often be complicated – and illegal succession can prove difficult to identify. One recent case involved the daughter of a tenant of a one-bedroom property, who upon the death of her mother, attempted to claim succession of the property. A check on Tenancy Analytics identified that she had never lived at the property and that her attempt at succession was therefore illegal. Nor did she have a right to an alternative property of an appropriate size, meaning that Swan had no obligation to house her. This meant that a family in need of housing were able to be housed within the property. Swan is currently going to court for an unlawful profit order and possession of the property.

Repossessing properties in cases of tenancy discrepancy continues to be a major focus for Swan and can at times, result in court proceedings being brought against tenants. Earlier this year, Swan was alerted through Tenancy Analytics to a case of a tenant subletting through AirBnB. They have subsequently instigated court proceedings against this tenant for an unlawful profit order and possession.

In another case, Tenancy Analytics flagged a tenant who was showing as living in a second home in addition to the property rented to her by Swan. Officers discovered that she had married and moved into her husband’s home, whilst illegally retaining her Swan property, for which Swan agreed an out of court suspended possession order and £7,000 costs.

Tracy stresses that without Tenancy Analytics, garnering this level of information would be very difficult and cost a lot more officer time; she tells us, “the tangible information you get from Tenancy Analytics means you can start investigating straight away.”

In addition to ensuring that the right tenants are in the right homes, Swan has also been using Tenancy Analytics to assist their tenants. Swan was approached earlier this year by a tenant who wanted her ex-partner to be taken off the tenancy, as she was unable to move while he was still named on it. However, she had no way of getting in contact with him to request this. Using Tenancy Analytics, Swan was able to locate the person in question and get agreement to remove him from the tenancy. The tenant was then able to move home, freeing up her property for another tenant.

Improvements

Over the past year, it is not only Tenancy Analytics that has been able to help Swan Housing, but Swan has in turn fed back new development ideas to help improve the system. Through its use of the solution, Swan has been able to identify ways in which the system can be enhanced to better support officers in their roles. The need for a new enhancement, a proactive ‘subletting case segment’ was brought to light by Swan Housing earlier this year as a way of helping identify levels of potential subletting. This was fed back to our Product team, who implemented a function whereby Tenancy Analytics would segment data using a combination of a tenant’s residency score and any individual that was leaving a digital footprint at the property, categorising the data into levels of potential subletting. As Tracy says, “MRI Software listened to our needs and developed a solution which will save us time and money.”

Andrea O’Callaghan, Customer Services Director at Swan commented, “The Tenancy Analytics solution is an extremely important tool in helping us work more efficiently to support our tenants and make sure our homes are occupied by the right people. I would recommend it to all social landlords.”

Greg Andrews, Head of Customer Operations at MRI Software echoes this: “It’s fantastic to see the good work Swan is doing to support tenants by using Tenancy Analytics to understand exactly what is happening in their properties. Since 2018, Swan has used Tenancy Analytics to free up 19 homes, with many more currently under investigation, enabling them to house tenants in genuine need.”

MRI Software build a number of solutions for the social housing sector including HomeSwapper. If you would like to know more about what we do, please drop an email to socialhousing@mrisoftware.com