The government, announced this morning by their renamed Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, that they have pledged £65,000,000 to help some of the most vulnerable tenants that have fallen into rent arrears as a result of the pandemic.

From the information released so far, it appears that local councils will be distributing the funding to support low-income families that are behind on their rent.

However, what we don't know is how the local councils will decide who to help and what criteria they will be using to decide, nor have they announced how people go about making the claims. At Grey & Co we will now be contacting the people we know at Brent Council to see if we can get lowdown on how people make these claims, as there is a limited pot of money we want to make sure that we have the knowledge for you first.

The other question to ask is not only how do we get our tenants to apply for this, but is this enough, £65m sounds like a lot of money but let's look at the size of the problem.

Jon Sparks, CEO of Crisis says that almost a million households in the UK are in rent arrears and Chris Norris, policy director for the National Residential Landlords Association, says that NRLA analysis put the figure of covid rent debts at over £300m.

So the question is with household bills rising and Christmas round the corner will this £65m cash injection be enough to help the most vulnerable tenants and also will it reach those landlords that themselves are most at financial risk?

We would love to hear your thoughts on this or if you want to discuss your tenants rent arrears then please give us a call in the office on 020 8903 3909.

The Team at Grey & Co x.

*Sources: Guardian Article and Letting Agent Today - Graham Norwood