Expanding tenant support and slashing rent arrears at NWHA

3,000 properties

across North Wales

72% of tenants

went on to have a conversation with the team after listening to a Voicescape message

2.5% arrears rate

down from 3.4% !

North Wales Housing Association (NWHA) is a community-based landlord operating across all six North Wales counties with a stock of just under 3,000 homes. They cover a vast geographical area for their size, and they’re developing at pace – working with the Welsh government to help deliver their pledge of building 20,000 new low-carbon social homes. 

A few years ago, NWHA were undergoing a restructuring of their rent team to better meet the needs of residents, achieve more efficient income collection, and tackle rising rent arrears. This is where Voicescape Collections came in, facilitating engagement to drive arrears down and empower their team with the capacity needed to better support residents. 

The Challenge

NWHA’s ethos is to build sustainable communities that people want to live in, with key values of trust, fairness and openness. To embody this further, they launched a ‘support-first’ approach as part of their restructuring, prioritising money advice support before requesting rent. This required moving from one specialist Money Advice Officer to embedding that skill set across the income team. They also implemented a more targeted approach to reduce arrears, following a patch-based structure.

While these new approaches showed positive signs, NWHA’s arrears were still rising. The issue was further exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis, which meant their Income and Money Advice Officers were overwhelmed with complex and intense calls. They needed a solution that could take away the initial non-value outbound calling, freeing up capacity for their officers to have lengthier, more supportive conversations with consistent follow-ups. This way, they could keep communication open and ensure rent support was provided to those who needed it. 

The Solution

NWHA’s Income Manager Darren Thomas had previous experience of what Voicescape can do. Through supportive collaboration, he facilitated the procurement of Voicescape Collections – our innovative income collection solution that automates outbound calls, driving engagement back into the organisation. 

In preparation for go-live in October 2023, NWHA recorded bilingual outbound messages tailored to each patch, encouraging residents to be transferred back into the organisation for money advice and support, instead of a direct request for rent payment. 

Initially, the NWHA Income team had concerns that this would take autonomy away from front-line income officers, and they were sceptical over how the automated outbound messages would land. But with help from our Customer Success team, Darren achieved officer buy-in by consciously introducing it as a labour-saving solution – and within the first months of going live, it proved itself to be exactly that. Voicescape Collections became, and remains, a fundamental part of their arrears collection.

“Voicescape takes the bottom tranche of our arrears, freeing up staff to make judgment calls and engage with the more complex, urgent cases for residents who are further up the arrears chain.”

Darren Thomas, Income Manager at NWHA

The Results

In the first six months of using Voicescape Collections, NWHA managed to bring their arrears below target while triggering the removal of ‘rent arrears’ from the organisation’s corporate risk register. This demonstrates the instantaneous organisational impact of our Collections solution. 

Here’s a roundup of NWHA’s conversation activity within that initial time frame:

• 8,779 attempted calls, generating 604 conversations with 386 different residents
• On average, 60% of all residents who received a successful call opted to transfer and have at least one direct conversation throughout the year
• On average, 72% of all residents who listened to the recorded message went on to have at least one direct conversation throughout the year

NWHA have developed their ‘support-first’ approach, utilising hardship funds driven by additional supporting officers to get financial help to the residents fthat need it most. As a result, their Income team achieved an uptake of cash assistance plans and benefits of £890,000 from April to November 2024. Voicescape has been intrinsic to this, creating capacity for officers to have those conversations at scale. 

In addition, from January 2023 to January 2024, NWHA’s arrears position has dropped from 3.4% to 2.3%. Ultimately, their arrears performance is in a significantly better place than it was before using Voicescape, and by removing rent arrears from the risk register, NWHA is empowered to keep financing their ongoing property developments with the Welsh government. 

“Voicescape is in the background now – it’s blended in. We got support from our Resource Director and senior leadership team to bring in extra officers, but we also had Voicescape, and that’s been one of the key factors towards coming in below our arrears target and taking it off the strategic risk register, which is something I’ve never heard of – it was a big thing for us.”

Darren Thomas, Income Manager at NWHA

The Future

With engagement facilitated by Voicescape, NWHA have been able to remain true to their ethos, values and ‘support-first’ approach, offering a trusted support network that both short- and long-term residents can rely on. 

Darren and his team have optimised the process all the way, streamlining payments by integrating allpay, as well as expanding use cases through text campaigns for Easter, Christmas and Universal Credit. And with more stock in the process of being built, NWHA are exploring the possibility of how Voicescape’s product suite can support them further using their current capacity.

“We know that we’ve got Voicescape as a partner – someone we can trust as we take the next steps as an organisation.”

Darren Thomas, Income Manager at NWHA

Want to discover how Voicescape Collections can improve your arrears performance? Get in touch with us today.