Social housing landlords are facing a potential financial crisis because their IT systems are not ready to cope with the major new changes to welfare reforms, according to a new study. The research also found that landlords are unable to access some of the most basic data on their tenants.

The independent study, carried out by Sheffield Hallam University on behalf of Housing Partners, found that because of the deficiencies in data and IT systems, landlords are ill-equipped to deal with the Government’s Universal Credit reforms. 

Nearly nine out of 10 landlords do not have access to the data they need to manage the introduction of the direct payment of housing benefit to tenants. This finding helps explain why many landlords support a change in the law to allow the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to share universal credit claimants’ personal data with social landlords, councils and charities.

Professor David Robinson, who led the study said: “Virtually all landlords (98%) expect to see an increase in rent arrears, one-third expect direct payment to impact on their relationship with institutional lenders and one-quarter consider direct payments to be a threat to their new build programme.”