What happens if you don't pay your rent

We will:

• contact you to let you know that you are in arrears and ask you to get in touch with us
• work with you to try to agree an affordable repayment plan to clear the arrears
• expect you to keep to any agreement you make, or to let us know if you are experiencing financial difficulties
• take court action to recover the money you owe if you do not clear your debt or do not keep to an agreement
• make you aware that if the case goes to court, the resulting court order may affect your credit rating, your tenancy would now be at risk and you may have to pay court costs
• stop arrears action if you clear your arrears in full or come to a payment arrangement which is kept to with our income recovery team.

If your rent arrears are increasing and you have not made a payment arrangement with us, we will issue either:

• a Notice of Seeking Possession
• a Notice of Possession Proceedings
• a Notice Seeking Termination of Tenancy
• a Notice to Quit

This notice is the first stage before we can start any court action against you.

If you receive any of the above notices, please contact us immediately.

We would much prefer to make an arrangement with you rather than going to court. Going to court could leave you liable for court costs or with a possession order on your home.

• We serve a Notice and you are given a specific number of days (relevant to each Notice) to respond and make an arrangement to pay your rent. If you contact us within that timeframe and start making repayments we will not take any further action.
• If we don't hear from you within the stated time, we may apply to the court to ask for a hearing. If your case goes to court we will inform you of the court date once we have received it from our legal team. At the hearing, we may ask for a possession order for your home. We can ask for outright possession, which requires you to leave your home, or a suspended possession, which means you can keep your home if you keep to the conditions set out by the court. If you don't keep to the conditions of your order we may request an eviction warrant. If this happens you will be given a date and time when the eviction is due to take place and the bailiffs will attend to evict you.
• The outcome will depend on the court’s decision, the type of possession order issued and your tenancy type. Whatever order you receive, you may have to pay us court costs.
• If you receive an outright possession order we will request a warrant for bailiffs to evict you. If you refuse to leave, we will request an eviction warrant.

Eviction is always the last resort. We do not take this decision lightly and will try all options available to us to reach arrangements and to get you to engage with us.

Once we have applied for an eviction warrant the court will set an eviction date. We will inform you of the date and time once we have received it from our legal team.

A bailiff will hand deliver a warrant to you and this will tell you what will happen. If you decide you want to remain in the property and are prepared to pay your rent and reach an agreement, you can complete a form via the courts to request a 'stay of eviction'. You may have to pay a fee to file this form with the court. If you complete a 'stay', the court will let us know and we will attend a hearing at the court.

At this hearing, the judge and our representative will hear your reasons for not being evicted and what you propose to pay towards your rent. It's still not too late to save your home but you will need pay off your arrears, plus any legal costs, in full to prevent eviction.

If the eviction goes ahead, on the day of the eviction we will attend your property along with the court bailiff at the time given on the warrant. We will then take possession of the property and you will be expected to leave. We would also expect you to arrange to take your belongings on the day of the eviction.

You can apply for housing advice from the housing options team, but we will not rehouse you into another property while you have rent arrears.

If you find yourself subject to any of these actions we would recommend you take independent advice.

• Contact Citizens Advice Bureau (opens in new tab)