Why do tenancies fail?

Our latest Scrutiny Panel report

Whilst we hope that all our customers enjoy living with us for as long as they wish to, unfortunately sometimes things don’t work out and customers move on potentially earlier than they might’ve planned.

We call these ‘failed tenancies’ and it’s one of our aims in our Customer Strategy to review the reasons why tenancies fail and improve interventions to keep people in their homes for as long as possible.

Scrutiny Panel questions

Our Scrutiny Panel is a group of customers who look objectively into detail about specific issues that affect customers and make recommendations for improvements.

Earlier this year they carried out a review into failed tenancies and their findings are helping to make our processes better for our customers.

The key questions the Scrutiny Panel set out to answer were:

• Is there an effective approach for identifying tenancies at risk of failure?
• What preventative action is implemented to help customers?
• How does NCHA define and capture tenancies that have failed?
• Is there an effective approach for identifying lessons learned and implementing service changes?

Reviewing information and writing a report

The Scrutiny Panel carried out research, reading NCHA’s policies and procedures around sustaining tenancies, looking at key performance data for trends and interviewing key management staff.  

Data shows that single males, those under 25 years old and people with poor mental health are most likely to struggle to sustain a tenancy so those groups of customers are already offered more support, but the Scrutiny Panel found there are often more complex factors at play, including a customer’s financial situation and the impact of high energy bills / fuel poverty, and other vulnerabilities not always first declared.

Through this research, and with their analytical thinking caps on, the panel wrote a report on their findings, including recommendations for improvements to the way NCHA helps customers to sustain their tenancy.

Because the recommendations are based on thorough evidence-based research, they’ve been accepted by NCHA and an action plan has been produced to ensure the recommendations are put in place over the coming year. 

Our Customer Committee oversee the action plan to ensure the target deadlines are met, and this is also reported back to Scrutiny Panel.

Find out more

If you’re an NCHA customer and you’d like to read the Scrutiny Panel review into failed tenancies in full, please email customerengagement@ncha.org.uk and we’ll send you a copy.

If you’re interested in finding out more about getting involved in our Scrutiny Panel, please complete this form and we’ll get in touch. Remember, we pay £50 for every meeting you attend!

The Scrutiny Panel is now reviewing our approach to anti-social behaviour (ASB) and their next report should be completed by the end of August.