Claims harvesters have become increasingly prevalent in the social housing sector over the last few years, targeting households, exploiting tenants, and draining much needed resources from Housing Revenue Accounts. As a result of the easy profits to be made, there are worrying cases of claims harvesters becoming tied up with organised crime, impersonating local authority staff, and using unethical (and sometimes illegal) methods to ‘encourage’ tenants to take cases to court. We fully support the fundamental principle of the tenant’s right to bring a disrepair claim against their landlord. However, tenants can already do this without claims harvesters, who are reported to take the bulk of the compensation payments in legal fees.

ARCH is working with NFA to carry out a survey on claims harvesting across their memberships to understand the scale of the issue, the impact on tenants and the costs to Housing Revenue Accounts (with the NFA administering the survey). We are supported by the LGA, which is sharing with their membership so we cover the whole local authority housing sector and the Housing Ombudsman. We will be feeding the findings of the survey into the new government to support the case for change. 

We would very much appreciate it if you could complete the survey on behalf of your local authority – the more responses we have, the stronger the case for reform will be.  

The survey deadline is 8 August, but let us know if you need more time due to summer holidays. We have attached a PDF of the questions to assist with gathering responses, but we would appreciate it if you could complete your response: Click here for survey

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Lisa Birchall NFA (lisa.birchall@almos.org.uk) or Matthew Warburton (matthew.warburton@arch-housing.org.uk)