Housing Association arrears on old tenancy?

viewings

My boyfriend and I have moved in with each other to a new home. He previously lived in a housing association property.

Unfortunately, he did not give notice because he feared that the neighbours would get to know that he was leaving and start pilfering items.

Once he left, he spoke to the association who said that they would look into whether he had to pay a month's rent as notice and was told that they would probably not charge him, but didnt guarantee this.

He did not give a forwarding address to them, but we have both had our mail redirected.
Since then, they initially wrote a letter (after he handed back the keys), as if he was still the tenant and stating that his account was in arrears. This went on a few weeks, increasing each week. He then emailed them to confirm that since handing the keys in, he is no longer a tenant and had been told by the HA that they would consider whether he had to pay a months notice.

After a few emails, he received no more communication via email (they didnt reply to his last one).

Some months went by and they still kept writing to him as if he was the tenant, obviously by now the rent arrears had increased to more than a month.

Then there was a lull in the letters and now this morning a new letter came, saying that there are arrears on a 'former tenancy' and that failure to repay will result in debt recovery action.

I dont like having letters like that coming here, even though they are being redirected, they dont have our address. He says he will just continue to ignore them, due to the fact that he was in email communication with them and they failed to respond to that avenue of dialogue.
He says to stop the letters, he will cancel the redirection.

However I am very worried about the prospect of debt recovery and want him to communicate to the association, which he refuses to do. He says that they cant go to court because they dont have his actual address, they cant prove that papers would be served on him. Whilst he was in email communication with the HA, he did ask them to confirm whether the property was let during the notice period, but they have not replied.

What is the best course of action here?

Fire_Fox

Your boyfriend is being very immature. E-mail is not formal communication, the AST was a legally binding contract which needs to be ended formally. Debt collection agencies can find you though the electoral roll, addresses on credit files (bank accounts) - you can hide for so long but they will find him eventually, he will have to pay all the costs of debt collection and this will have a negative effect on his credit history for up to six years after the debt is settled. I wouldn't be overly worried about bailiffs showing up at your door I'd be more worried about my partner's attitude to money.

pineapple123

He runs the risk of having to pay it all back or having an application turned down if he needs housing with them in the future.
Sort it out now, maybe he could come to some arrangement with them and pay a nominal amount each week.

viewings

we're in our own property now in a different area

my worry is, now that we are financially associated with each other, any debt action will also impact on me and my credit file.
he also doesnt have the money to pay the arrears, let alone any build up of further charges

however, he wont listen to me about anything, he is 'always right'

for some reason, he is saying that if they do locate him and write to him at this address, he will then correspond to them, but wont whilst they still write to him at the address where he no longer lives. he says that this is because he opened a dialogue with them via email but they didnt reply to him after a while

ILW

He is an idiot.
I would dump him before he drags you both into financial problems.

Fire_Fox

viewings wrote: »

we're in our own property now in a different area

my worry is, now that we are financially associated with each other, any debt action will also impact on me and my credit file.
he also doesnt have the money to pay the arrears, let alone any build up of further charges

however, he wont listen to me about anything, he is 'always right'

for some reason, he is saying that if they do locate him and write to him at this address, he will then correspond to them, but wont whilst they still write to him at the address where he no longer lives. he says that this is because he opened a dialogue with them via email but they didnt reply to him after a while

He doesn't treat your opinions with respect, he doesn't treat your credit worthiness with respect, he doesn't have any money and he isn't willing to be a man about his debts. Where exactly is this relationship going?

tbs624

Get yourself along to the local CAB and drag the fool with you. It's clear that he is considered not to have given proper notice, as required under the terms of his former tenancy agreement.

puddy

did he have any proper grounds for not giving notice and how is he ever going to know if they rented it straight away anyway, they could just say they didnt?

silvercar

Unfortunately, he did not give notice because he feared that the neighbours would get to know that he was leaving and start pilfering items.

Why, do the HA put notices around the property?

Get real. He failed to give notice and now has to live with the consequences.

People only fail to give forwarding addressess if they don't want to be found.

robin_banks

The only way neighbours would know he was leaving was if he told them.

HA's would not put notice on a property. He hasn't formallly ended the AST and is liable for the rwent until he formally does so.

I smell a rat here, is he running from other debts.

BTW I work for a HA.

viewings

Well he is a bit paranoid generally. He said that when people realised that he was moving out, they would be in,, all over the property, squatting etc. In fact, 3 days after we moved in here, he was still going back to collect things and sort belongings out, and found that the neighbour had been in to hack down the trees which she has never liked.

He said that another reason why he did not give notice was that whilst we were waiting to move, we were messed about a lot by the mortgage company and the completion date kept moving. He said that he could not give notice as he was not exactly sure when we would move.

My problem with that argument was that it took him ages to clear his things out (he is a horder) and we knew that we would be moving about a year in advance, so he should have started sorting out then, rather than it being a big rush in the last 6 weeks.

But all this is a bit academic now. Would it be OK to phone the HA and discuss with them, he would be annoyed if I did this, but I feel it needs to be sorted.