Northgate urges Scottish Government to empower tenants through tackling benefits complexity

28th January 2008

Northgate Information Solutions, a leading provider of innovative services to the public sector and utilities markets, today urged the Scottish Government to take measures to widen the housing opportunities of tenants on low incomes and homeless people by tackling the barriers to the private rented sector that are created by the benefits system.

In a wide ranging response to the Scottish Government’s housing review ‘Firm foundations – the future for housing in Scotland’, Northgate warned the government that a balance needed to be made between the needs of the most vulnerable in our communities and the needs of the private rented sector.

According to Northgate, local authorities should be given a strategic role in promoting
wider access to quality housing in the private rented sector. They should be encouraged to introduce initiatives such as local authority backed guarantees in place of deposits; ensure that citizens take up and receive prompt payment of the benefits to which they are entitled; and consider the equitable use of discretionary benefit payments to tackle the problem of rent shortfall.

The response fully endorses the role of social housing in providing quality housing to all. It welcomes the Scottish Government’s decision to establish an independent social housing regulator. It calls on the Scottish Government to promote effective, lighter touch regulation by ensuring that social housing providers:
• are statutorily required to provide to the regulator enhanced information about services including levels of tenant satisfaction, tenant involvement and choice;
• establish formal arrangements to enable tenants to make periodic assessments of the quality of services provided to them;
• share benchmarking information about their performance with other providers and publish this information more widely.

Joe Bradley, Managing Director of Local Government & Social Housing at Northgate Public Services, said today:

“A mixed economy makes sense but not if the most vulnerable members of our community have to pay too high a price. If we are to solve the current housing shortage in Scotland we have to provide wider opportunities to access higher quality housing both in the social housing and private rented sectors. We believe that there is a strong case for building on the local success of landlord forums by establishing a national forum involving government, the private rented sector and tenants.

“We must prevent exploitation and promote quality housing for all. It is only by developing innovative and collaborative responses involving tenants and working in partnership across traditional boundaries, that we can remove the barriers that have existed for far too long and create sustainable and healthy communities in which everyone has the opportunity to thrive.”

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