MRI Tenancy Analytics Case Study: Luton Community Housing

At the start of this year, Luton Community Housing (LCH) started using MRI Tenancy Analytics, our income protection solution, in order to develop a better knowledge of its tenants. A lack of detailed information about tenants was proving a challenge and so the hope was that Tenancy Analytics would enable necessary areas to be worked on with tenants, identify areas in need of special attention, and support better tailoring of services for tenants.

Additionally, LCH needed a system that would help identify any potential fraud cases, ensuring housing stock could be better used by those most in need. Here, we look back on the year and the ways in which LCH has been able to use MRI Tenancy Analytics to its and its tenants’ advantage.

Much of the focus for LCH over the past year of using MRI Tenancy Analytics has been on fraud and financial campaigns, through which tenants in financial difficulty could be supported. Using Tenancy Analytics, new LCH tenants are now run through Pre-Tenancy Financial Assessments, which supports tenancy sustainability and means tenants are more likely to be able to complete first-year tenancies and beyond.

Supporting this strategy, Tenancy Analytics has also formed the base for portfolio plans for three Customer Relationship Managers, enabling a better understanding of each tenant’s situation and supporting day-to-day duties. Noting other areas of support, Susanne from LCH tells us:

“MRI Tenancy Analytics has helped us to highlight many issues with our tenants, with our main work around financial distress, to work with those tenants who are suffering financial difficulty and provide guidance. Arrears have reduced following a financial support campaign driven by Tenancy Analytics.

“It has also helped LCH to identify at least one case of fraud, which has led to us recovering a four-bed property and re-housing a family in need; a socially positive win.”

“We wouldn’t be without it!”

Moving forward, LCH has its sights set on using Tenancy Analytics to support the roll-out of Universal Credit; last month, their area became a full Universal Credit area and LCH has been acutely aware of some of the complications that can arise for tenants and their tenancies.

LCH’s intention is to continue to use MRI Tenancy Analytics to monitor financial distress, in order to work more closely with those tenants most likely to struggle, as well as using Tenancy Analytics’s FTA (Former Tenant Arrears) tracing tool to implement a benefit in arrears collection. On the other end of the scale, LCH plans to use MRI Tenancy Analytics to target tenants who could be on Direct Debit and to encourage them to sign up.

To find out more about how MRI Tenancy Analytics could support you and your team with managing your tenancies, click here.