New research has revealed that the value of rental arrears owed to local authorities has increased by more than 70% in the last five years.
Public sector payments operator Access PaySuite has used Freedom of Information requests to local authorities to create the data.
This shows that local authorities providing social housing are owed on average £3.1m per authority in rental arrears. This has increased by 71% from an average of £1.8m in 2019.
As well as the jump over the last five years, authorities have also seen a significant jump over the last year – with the analysis finding a 14% increase when compared to March 2023.
It’s not just local authorities facing the challenge of surging rental arrears in social housing. In March this year the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) recorded an 8.4% rise in rent arrears reported by housing associations – hitting a record high of £800m – the highest single year jump since before the pandemic.
Local authorities have seen a similar picture, with the number of tenants falling into rental arrears increase by 17% over the last five years. On average, 41% of social housing units are currently in rental arrears.
The research found that the value of rental arrears per tenant have increased from £492 in 2019 to £710 in 2024, an increase of 44%.
221 local authorities in the UK own social housing, with a total 1.56 million units of housing stock recorded by the Regulator of Social Housing in 2023.
An Access PaySuite spokesperson says: “Social housing budgets have been squeezed significantly over recent years. On top of this, the cost of living crisis has caused real difficulties for many people to meet their living costs, whether they rent their property from their local authority, a housing association or a private landlord.
“If we apply our representative sample across the 221 local authorities which own social housing, the total value of rental arrears across local government could be as high as £650 million.
“For local authorities and housing associations, this creates a challenging balancing act between affordability for tenants, while meeting costs for their own essential expenditure requirements. Alongside rental arrears, local authorities are also spending significant amounts of time chasing overdue council tax payments, all of which is adding to their operating costs.”
