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MORTGAGE ARREARS AND REPOSSESSIONS IN SCOTLAND

Annex Six: OUTCOME OF PILOTING METHODS OF CONTACT FOR BORROWERS

SCORE AND HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS

A6.1 Scottish Homes produced an extract of Housing Associations with tenants whose homes had been repossessed from SCORE database.

Table A6.1 SCORE logs giving mortgage arrears/repossession as the reason for requiring housing.

Note All of the data is gathered on our financial year basis running between 1 April and 31 March.

A6.2 Scottish Homes were not willing to pass over details directly to us, but did identify the 40 Housing Associations (HA) who housed the 69 applicants who needed homes due to repossession in 1999/2000. Letters were sent to each of the 40 HA to see if they would identify tenants' names and addresses, as these are not on the SCORE database. We received 14 replies, and 10 housing associations have identified 18 tenants who have been repossessed in 2000 and are willing to pass on questionnaires to the tenants. Four of the replies received were from housing associations who did not wish to take part in the research.

A6.3 In order to boost the response from housing associations, a letter was sent to the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. They did publish a piece in their newsletter to promote our research amongst housing associations and this has resulted in an couple of additional offers of help from people who had read the article.

A6.4 The housing associations who responded identified a number of tenants who had been re-housed due to repossession. This proved to be an easy exercise in some housing associations but difficult in others where the records were not computerised. Most housing associations preferred that any correspondence went to them and was passed on to the tenants.

CONSULTATION WITH VOLUNTARY SECTOR AND OTHER ORGANISATIONS DEALING WITH THE HOMELESS

A6.5 Letters were sent to 119 voluntary sector and other organisations who dealt with the homeless. These organisations were invited to assist this research by either identifying people who had experienced/were experiencing serious arrears or whose homes had been repossessed. Assurances of confidentially were given.

A6.6 Agencies contacted included all Citizens Advice Bureaux in Scotland , Shelter, Scottish Campaign for Homeless People, Scottish Council for Single Homeless, Edinburgh Cyrenians, Edinburgh Cyrenians Trust, Bethany Christian Trust, Bethany Supported Housing, and Tenants in Control, Freespace Housing, and Homeless Outreach project.

A6.7 Citizens Advice (Scotland) headquarters in Edinburgh, were fully supportive of the policy objectives of this research. In all our dealings with Citizens Advice Bureaux's we stressed that we acknowledged that confidentiality was one of the Service's fundamental principles, and we gave reassures that we were not going to breach an individual's confidentiality.

A6.8 Letters were also written to the Federation of Independent Advice Centres Federation (FIAC) and the Independent Counselling and Advice Support (ICAS) which operate counsellors through workplaces to provide advice on debt related issues (a kind of employee assistance program).

A6.9 The Headquarters of the Federation of Information and Advice Centres were happy to provide assistance to our project. They provided contact details of every one of their 46 advice centres in Scotland, which we subsequently wrote to.

HOUSING STATISTICS DEPARTMENT AND LOCAL AUTHORITY WAITING LISTS

A6.10 The Scottish Executive Housing Statistics Department have local authority case returns (called HL1 and HL2 forms) for all the local authorities in Scotland but only have reference numbers and not individual household names and addresses. Their data on repossessions is useful for statistical reference only. It was thought initially that it would be possible for them to extract the reference numbers we are interested in, in order to make the request to the local authority more manageable. However, it turned out that different identification numbers are used on the Scottish Executive system from the local authority systems. For some local authorities, records exist manually. Identification numbers will be standardised between the Scottish and local authorities in the future, but not during the course of this project.

A6.11 The current Scottish Executive Statistical Bulletin, gives the 98-99 figures for housing applications to local authorities where the reason for loss or threatened loss of accommodation was mortgage default as follows:

Table A6.2 Housing application for mortgage default

Source: Figures for 1998-1999, Table 14, Scottish Executive Statistical Bulletin - Housing Series. HSG/2000/5, 2001. Scotland (Grossed & Rounded).

A6.12 These figures can also be stratified by local authority.

Table A6.3 Homeless Applications Where Reason Given Was Mortgage Default, by Local Authority Assessment: 1998-99

A6.13 In theory, this looks like a rich source of potential interviewees. Only interim figures for 1999-2000. The completed figures from 1998-1999 give a better identification of the spread of cases.

A6.14 All 32 local authorities were contacted and then later reminded during the course of the research.

COURT RECORD DATA

A6.15 The advantage of the court record data was that, if the decree is granted, the records were in the public domain. Contact details (ie name and address details for defender(s)) were nearly always contained in court processes, but were not normally in the court registers. In some cases only the address of the property was given, however in others one or more addresses were given for the previous occupants of the house being repossessed. This source yielded a large number of addresses. There are 631 addresses in our database. The breakdown of these addresses is shown in the following tables.

Table A6.4 Location of addresses in the year 2000 court records

Notes In the main, these addresses were obtained from the 16% sample of the court processes in 2000 (373 cases).

The addresses are split between the property address, defender 1 address, and defender 2 address.

In Glasgow and Falkirk for the year of 2000 the summary records contained the addresses of the defender and so nearly 100% of these have been obtained, not only 16% from the sample of the processes.

There were no third defender addresses.

DEBT ADVISORS

A6.16 Contact details of all debt advisors who gave out housing advice were obtained from the Scottish Executive. All of these were contacted at least twice during the course of the research.

NEWSPAPER ADVERTS

A6.17 A number of adverts were placed in regional newspapers in Scotland. Responses were received from the adverts in the papers shown in table x. In addition, a short article was written about the project in the Evening Times, and 5 contacts were received on the back of this publicity.

Table A6.5 Newspaper advert

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