Rent arrears

[WhatNow1993]

Sorry if this is long... I moved into my house in 2017 after leaving a very bad relationship. My housing officer came round to sort the tenancy and while here, we filled in a housing benefit form together. She took all paperwork and evidence with her and told me she would take it all back and get it sorted out.
I know it is essentially my responsibility to make sure it was all done but it just didn't enter my head to check and I had no letters or anything to say otherwise.
I have now been served with a section 8 and have over £4000 Rent arrears.
I applied for DHP and was refused because they say I have £15 a month spare and can come to an arrangement social services have now opened a child protection plan as they say I've neglected my kids by risking their home and if I get evicted, they will house my children but not me.

I know I should have checked and made sure my hb had been set up correctly but I trusted my housing officer. Also how can a landlord let you get into £4000+ arrears before letting you know?

I have been to the CAB and they said there's nothing they can do to help as it is rent and is my fault no matter what the reasons are.

Does anyone know where I can go for advice/help? I stand to lose my children and my home and no one so far has been able to help me, except to say I need to pay it. I wish i could, but unfortunately I can't magic up that kind of money.

Were you entitled to hb and it just never got paid to ll or was your claim declined. Can you offer installments for arrears?

Can you speak to the officer that was supposed to fill in the forms to find out what happened? (Rather than just another officer there - try to track her down if she left even) If she took stuff away with her to help her fill in forms, was it original copies that she gave back to you or did she take copies? Are you now without the original info that you needed?

Sorry lots of questions rather than answers but hopefully they will help if others are able to say worth doing or not.

Don’t suppose you have any legal insurance cover on anything do you? Often comes with house/contents insurance, car insurance, union membership, working at some big companies etc.

Would it be worth doing a freedom of information request for all the information the housing office have on you in their files in case you can prove that you have been treated wrongly?

I was entitled to full housing benefits due to being signed off work with a severe back injury just before I moved house, I'm on a waiting list for surgery. I am currently paying 20 a week but it's making me struggle - a lot. My electric meter is beeping again so we'll be at my mums until Monday, when I can get some more.

I've explained all of this to the housing association but their response has been if I don't keep up the payments, they'll repossess. I can never get hold of the social worker, ever! But she's claiming I'm not cooperating and has started to put a case together that is based on so many un true and irrelevant things. It feels like she's getting prepared to put in a solid case to take my children, when I lose the house.

I really never saw any of this coming and I have no idea how to sort it out.

I don’t really have any advice but hope someone can help you. It sounds like a horrible situation that has been made worse by people who are meant to be helping you 💐

I spoke to the housing officer when I got the section 8 through but she said she's not my housing officer any more and wouldn't talk to me about it. She was quite abrupt and put the phone down on me when I asked her what happened and why I'm only just finding out.

The only proof I have is a scanned document I emailed to her which I didn't have to hand that day but apparently that doesn't prove anything worth while.

Thanks @Goodnightjude1

Is housing benefit covering the full rent now in place? What is your income?

Full housing benefit is now in place so it's just the arrears I need to cover. I am on esa and get a small amount of tax credits.

Thank you! I am currently paying 20 pw but it was a verbal agreement I made in a panic at the council office that I really cannot afford. Does that mean I can go to court and get that lowered to £4 with no repercussions?

My mental health was very poor at the time which is why my housing officer said she would fill in forms with me so nothing got missed but it's all gone very wrong somewhere! I think it's an assured tenancy but I'm not 100%

No i'm so sorry I have asked for my post to be removed. Because it is a s8 that is a mandatory ground which means the judge will have no choice but to award the possession. You should complete an income and expenditure form and give this to your housing officer and ask if they will consider reducing the amount as it is causing you hardship. You must continue making the payments in the meantime. Is there any way to reduce your outgoings?

You should make a complaint re the housing officer. It is very significant you were unwell and you should have been able to rely on her. However they also must have sent warning letters which i guess you weren't able to respond to due to your illness.

Firstly, if you are a social tenant and are now paying your full rent plus have offered / agreed a payment plan (even if it’s only a small amount like £50 a month) to repay your arrears, it is extremely unlikely that a court will grant your housing association a possession order. The majority of county court judges are very tenant-friendly where social tenants are concerned and see eviction as a last resort if you are refusing to pay arrears. They may grant a suspended possession order which would allow the housing association to return to court in the future to seek possession if you stop paying again. So don’t worry too unduly about eviction at this stage.

Secondly, I think you need to focus your complaint / enquiry on how they allowed £4,000 of arrears to build up and apply for a possession order before you knew anything about it, because none of this adds up. Even before you can receive a Section 8 Notice you must have been sent a Notice Seeking Possession and before that, unless there’s been an enormous oversight, their computer system will have automatically generated correspondence about your arrears and promoted staff to contact you.

Contact your new housing officer and say that under GDPR you want copies of all the information they hold on you, including any letters they must have sent you and phone records for calls they must have attempted to make about your arrears. This will help you defend your case, if there are none, as you claim.

@ComtesseDeSpair it's a Section 8.

I am trying to make a start on a complaint but it feels a bit like a David and Goliath fight. Thank you, I appreciate both of your replies.

A Section 8 would be a mandatory order, judge has no choice.

Are you sure that you haven’t been receiving letters and calls but ignoring them because you’ve felt too unwell to deal with everything? If you have, do admit this to your new housing officer and ask for help. That’s what they’re there for. At the moment, everything from claiming that your old housing officer didn’t explain the process of claiming benefit properly, to not knowing that you should have checked if your claim had been successful, to never receiving any communication about arrears may make it come across as a deliberate non-payer rather than someone who is simply unwell and has had their head in the sand a bit.

Even with a Section 8, it’s only mandatory if the landlord can prove they followed due process and the grounds conditions are met. The OP can challenge it - and a judge can use their discretion to override it - if there’s conclusive evidence that arrears were never notified and she wasn’t served with preliminary notices.

@ComtesseDeSpair unlikely.

It may be a section 8 notice but then notice has to specify which ground. The ground relied on may not be ground 8 - it may be ground 10, many social landlords don’t rely on ground 8 by convention.