New research from Citizens Advice has revealed that over 13 million people have already been unable to pay, or expect to be unable to pay, at least one bill because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Of these, almost 11 million have missed or expect to miss a bill that would leave them vulnerable to severe consequences – including eviction, bailiff enforcement or disconnection – when Covid-19 financial protections end.
Some sectors, including energy, water and mortgages, have established frameworks for helping people out of debt in a sustainable way. Others, including the private rented sector and local authorities, do not.
According to its research, conducted by Opinium among 2,016 nationally representative UK adults, the charity says that those most at risk of severe consequences include:
- 2.6 million private renters who have missed a rent payment already or expect to do so owing to coronavirus. This leaves them at risk of eviction – and possible homelessness – once the government’s pause on possession action ends in just eight weeks, on 25 June.
- 7.2 million people who have missed a council tax payment already or expect to do so owing to coronavirus. While face-to-face bailiff recovery is currently suspended during lockdown, a build up of arrears could lead to heavy-handed enforcement from cash-strapped councils once lockdown ends.
- 7.4 million people who have already missed or expect to miss a mobile phone or broadband payment. While telecoms companies have put in place measures to support customers with missed bills during lockdown, being in arrears after this time could lead to disconnection. This is at a time when people are relying on their phones and internet to work, learn and stay in touch with loved ones.
People facing the greatest health risk from coronavirus – those who are in the government’s categories of ‘increased risk’ or ‘extremely vulnerable’ to the illness – are three times as likely to have fallen behind on a bill.
Also more likely to have fallen behind on a bill are people in insecure work – either agency workers or those on zero-hours contracts – who are around three times as likely to have missed a bill payment than other workers. Those under 40 are over 4 times as likely to have fallen behind on a bill than those over 40.
But the Citizens Advice research has drawn criticism from the National Residential Landlords Assocition.
The NRLA say Citizens Advice appears to have extrapolated the figures concerning tenants who have missed, or are expecting to miss, payments from just 25 renters who said in a survey that they are behind on their rent because of coronavirus, and 74 who say they expect to be behind.
The National Residential Landlords Association says that this small, generalised survey has produced different results from a recent, specialised survey of renters reported in The Guardian which showed that instead of 23 per cent of private renters not being able to pay the rent as suggested by Citizens Advice, only 2 per cent had missed a rent payment and 12 per cent were struggling to pay.
Further research by Hamptons International has found that 70 per cent of tenancies that were due to end in March were renewed.
This was the highest level in any March since 2008 showing that the vast majority of landlords are supporting their tenants to feel secure in their properties during the coronavirus pandemic.
Chris Norris, Policy Director for the National Residential Landlords Association said:
“Clearly there are many tenants facing difficult times as with all sections of the community, including landlords, but speculating about serious issues based on minimal data does nothing to support or help those in need.
“It is a crude simplification and potentially very misleading to extrapolate figures from such a small sample.
“Whilst the overwhelming majority of tenants are continuing to pay their rents in full and on time, we continue to call for greater support for those who are struggling to pay.
“This should include ensuring benefits cover entirely the cost of people’s rents where they need it and scrapping the five week wait for the first payment of Universal Credit.”
Citizens advice, shelter, both leeches on society relying on gov handouts and duping the public. Using completely unreliable and inappropriate data to push their cause. We manage c150 properties, initially a few tenants advised that they were going to struggle but working with them and pointing them in the right direction, we have zero tenants in arrears, stick that in your proverbial pipes CA and shelter!
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London appears to be worst hit JC….got a few clients saying 30% in distress
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Daryl
No reason for arrears at all, gov help is there, just needs to be applied for. Any tenants not paying are swinging the lead and deserve to be evicted and have ccj against them.
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By definition the only people CA see are people in difficulties. If you aren’t in difficulty you wouldn’t go to CA.
CA’s figures are therefore are completely skewed, and no-one can draw any sensible conclusions from them.
This is just a bit headline grabbing scaremongering to justify their existence (and Government funding).
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Citizen Advice have been to the Shelter School of Economics and the Trump School of Politics.
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I long for the days when readily available & ratified data eliminates these nonsense articles extrapolated from small surveys. Surveys convey the message you want based on phrasing of questions and sample pool. Most agents I’ve spoken to are seeing around 5-10% of tenants approach- but that’s still not arrears.
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Opinium is an entirely Discredited ‘ research ‘ organisation. ! Research from them was published in Daily Mirror ( I know, enough said ) on 26th of March 2020 claiming that extrapolated figures from their research suggested there had been 1.3 MILLION ! evictions due to the Corona virus. There were only 67,000 in whole of 2019, 79% of them by Social Landlords.
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What a load of tosh! We manage 640 properties and 15 are currently behind on rent payments (with steps in place to get back on track). This represents 2.34% of our tenants. As Gromit stated above the only people talking to Citizens Advice are ones in difficulty, you wouldn’t speak to them if all was good so their survey is totally flawed!
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Daryl
No reason for arrears at all, gov help is there, just needs to be applied for. Any tenants not paying are swinging the lead and deserve to be evicted and have ccj against them.
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The CAB have just significantly discredited themselves.
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5 Million rented properties in UK and CAB are claiming half are or expect to be in arrears, laughable.
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