SOCIAL housing provider Incommunities failed to set rents correctly, resulting in hundreds of tenants being overcharged, a regulator has found.
An external investigation is currently underway and in a statement published today the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) said the Shipley-based company had breached the tenancy standard.
The regulator said it was a “serious matter leading to overcharging for tenants and as some of these rents may have been covered through housing benefit and universal credit, there may also be implications for the public purse”.
The external investigation is ongoing and the regulator said that until it had concluded it was “not possible to quantify the full scale of the errors, the overcharged rents and the impact on current and former tenants”.
Incommunities’ chief executive apologized for “failures” in its approach.
“Following a self-referral, RSH discovered that Incommunities had set rents incorrectly for hundreds of tenants,” the notice said.
“The housing association misclassified some of its homes as supported housing. He also misstated some of his rents on re-letting and did not cap rents on some of his homes as required. As a result of these mistakes, a significant number of tenants are overpriced.
“Following the discovery of these issues and in agreement with the regulator, Incommunities has engaged in an external investigation into its rent determination and is developing an action plan to ensure that the errors are rectified and minimize the risk of recurrence.
“This work will identify the full scale of the errors and the number of tenants who were overcharged. Affected tenants will be reimbursed by the provider.”
Maxine Loftus, director of regulatory operations, said: “Incommunities’ failure to set rents correctly resulted in tenants being overcharged.
“We will be working with Incommunities to make sure it makes things right for its current and previous tenants.”
The notice said that after the issues were discovered by Incommunities, it immediately reported the matter to the regulator and developed a wide-ranging action plan.
It added: “Incommunities’ board and management took immediate steps to reassure the regulator that it was committed to addressing the deficiencies and positively committed to us, with the support of external counsel, to take the necessary steps to resolve these issues.” ”
Incommunities chief executive Rachel Dennis said: “Following my appointment as chief executive in 2021, I have driven a thorough review of our services to ensure we deliver a quality, customer-focused service.
“We approached the regulator ourselves after uncovering historical problems with how we calculated some rents and service charges.
“The regulatory notice that has now been published is fair and essentially represents what we already know, including a range of issues that we are working hard to resolve.
“We have put in place a robust two-year strategy to improve business performance by setting clear and measurable targets to improve services, we are working closely with external advisers to ensure this situation is rectified as a matter of urgency and putting in place safeguards and improvements to make sure these issues don’t happen again.
“While there is clearly more work to be done, I am pleased that the regulator has noted the immediate steps taken by Incommunities Group’s board and management to address these failings and our willingness to take further steps to resolve the issues.”
“We would like to apologize to our customers for the failures in our approach that led to the regulator’s notice issued today.
“We are working with affected tenants and our local authority partners to ensure that any overcharges are returned as quickly as possible.”
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