Central Housing Group recently attended the Guaranteed Rent Scheme Hillingdon Landlord Forum on the evening of 20th November 2018 which was held at LB Hillingdon, Civic Centre, High Street, Uxbridge, UB8 1UW.

We were attending at the invitation of Jessica Alomankeh, Projects Manager of the London Landlord Accreditation Scheme (LLAS) and we welcomed the opportunity to speak to many Hillingdon landlords who attended as well as Hillingdon Council housing officers. Central Housing Group specialises in letting residential rental properties to London councils.

The Forum’s discussion topics and speakers were:-

1. HMO Update on Licensing – Speaker Dave Princep, Chair of UK Landlord Accreditation Partnership
2. Challenges Facing London Landlords – Speaker Richard Blanco, National Landlords Association Representative
3. Universal Credit – Speaker Inderpal Mudhar, DWP, Job Centre Plus

The event was well attended and there was lively debate between speakers and audience especially with regard to the recent changes to payments of housing costs for tenants on low incomes and formerly claiming housing benefit. Many of these tenants have now been transitioned over to Universal Credit whereby one benefit is now paid replacing the following other benefits:

• Child Tax Credit
• Housing Benefit
• Income Support
• Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Working Tax Credit

The new Universal Credit has been rolled out in LB Hillingdon since 24th October 2018 and many of the landlords in attendance were concerned that the Universal Credit which includes housing benefit is now being paid directly to tenants, whereby previously it was often paid directly to landlords instead. Concerns about the potential for creating tenancies with rent arrears have been publicly voiced in the press recently as this unwelcome development could have a serious impact on private sector landlords.

However, Central Housing Group’s ‘Let to the Council’ – Guaranteed Rent Scheme Hillingdon – protects landlords from any risk of tenants not paying their rent because rental payments are paid by Central Housing Group to landlords directly each month and are not subject to collection of rent from the tenants themselves. Central Housing Group’s tenants instead pay their rent directly to our council clients.

See details about our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here