Pay Your Rent

It is a condition of your tenancy agreement that rent is charged weekly and must be paid in advance on or before the Monday of each week. 

Prompt rent payments enable People First to deliver essential services to our tenants.

By phone: you can call us on 0161 235 6900.  You will need your bank debit card. Unfortunately, we cannot take payment by credit card.

By rent payment card: you can request a rent payment card which can be used at the Post Office or any AllPay cash point.

By standing order or direct debit: you will need to ring our team on 0161 235 6900 to get your unique four-digit tenant code to use as a reference for your payments. Once you have this, then simply use our bank details which are:

People First Housing Association

Branch Sort Code: 09-07-20

Account Number: 06610536

Please ensure you use your four-digit tenant code with each payment to ensure your payment can be allocated to your rent account.

By cash: Due to Covid-19 our offices are currently closed to the public. However, once we are back to some normality, you can visit our office and pay by cash.

Paying rent should be a priority when it comes to paying your bills as it can not only affect your credit rating but you may end up losing your home.

We will all experience some financial difficulties at times, when we can struggle to pay bills. Which is why we follow a firm but fair procedure when it comes to missed rent payments or rent arrears.

It’s really important that you get in touch with us as early as possible to discuss any problems you have with rent payments.

We can arrange a repayment plan which is affordable for you.  

However, if we don’t hear from you and you don’t respond to any of our attempts to contact you, then we may need to start legal action.

Stage 1: If you don’t pay your rent we will contact you in writing and by telephone. We may also arrange to visit you at home. You will need to agree a repayment plan that will reduce and then clear your rent arrears.

We will make sure that you can afford the payment plan. If you keep to this repayment agreement then we will take no further action.

Stage 2: If you don’t maintain payments you agreed with us, we will issue you with a ‘Notice of Seeking Possession’. This the first legal step towards us taking possession of your home.

The ‘Notice of Seeking Possession’ will give you 28 days to make an agreement with us to either reduce your rent arrears or pay them in full.

If you maintain this repayment agreement then we will not take any further action.

Stage 3: If you don’t keep to this agreement, we will make an application to the County Court.  The Court will send you a Summons telling you that you must attend a court hearing. You will have to pay us court costs. These are currently £325.00.

You can clear your rent arrears before the court hearing and it will not then go ahead. Or you can agree a repayment plan to clear your rent arrears within a reasonable period of time. In this case we can request that the court hearing is adjourned. We can ask for another court hearing if you do not keep to your agreement with us.

At the hearing, the County Court will issue you with a possession order. This is known as a Suspended Possession Order. This order of the court allows you to stay in your home as long as you keep to the agreement you have made with the court to repay your arrears and the court costs.  The order will stay in place until you have cleared your arrears and repaid the court costs. 

Stage 4: If you breach the terms of the court order by not paying your rent and not repaying your rent arrears, we will make an application to the County Court for a warrant of possession to evict you from your home.

This is the last stage of the rent arrears recovery process and will currently cost you £130.00.

After the County Court has issued you with a possession warrant, Bailiffs will set a date for eviction.  They will come to your home on this date to make sure that you leave.  You can avoid being evicted and stay in your home if you repay your arrears in full before this date. 

If you are evicted from your home, this may mean that another housing association will not rehouse you because you have a history of not paying your rent.  The Local Authority will also class you as being ‘intentionally homeless’ and so may not have any duty to rehouse you.

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