How Fairhive Reduced Arrears by £640K with Caseload Manager

25%

Reduction in current tenant arrears debt, falling from 2.88% to 2.16%. 

£640k

 Drop in total arrears over 19-months. 

£186k

Reduction in arrears in the first year. 

Overview

Fairhive wanted to move from reactive arrears management to a more proactive, streamlined approach, one that gave officers clearer visibility of cases, helping them intervene earlier and improve overall effectiveness.

Since implementing Voicescape Caseload Manager in October 2024, Fairhive has seen its current tenant arrears position continue to trend down, moving from 2.88% in 2023 to 2.16% in May 2026. Over the same period, total arrears have reduced by more than £640k including a £186k reduction in the first year - driven significantly by Caseload Manager’s intelligent automation.

The Challenge

With arrears rising, Fairhive needed a more effective way to reduce them while continuing to support residents. Previously, their approach to arrears management was largely reactive due to limited employee capacity and fragmented case visibility.

Hayley Dickens, Income and Leasehold Manager at Fairhive, responsible for the rent team collecting an annual debit of £65m noted that, prior to using Voicescape, Fairhive were going through an agile IT project as an organisation, which required reviewing all their systems. They used this review as an opportunity to evaluate their arrears management software and compare alternative solutions that could provide greater visibility of rent accounts, enabling officers to access a single view of all relevant information and improving accessibility and ease of use.

Recognising that existing processes were heavily reliant on manual intervention, Fairhive identified Caseload Manager as a critical component of its transformation strategy to streamline operations, support future organisational growth and improve the identification of arrears to enable earlier, more proactive intervention. 

The Solution

Fairhive went live with Caseload Manager in October 2024, which enabled them to:

• Utilise Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) – to help identify which cases needed officer attention, which could be automated, and where earlier intervention could prevent arrears escalating.
• Enable true daily processing recommendations – providing continual data refresh and daily updates, providing officers with the latest information on customer payments and challenges.
• Prioritise cases daily – based on risk, payment behaviour and account movement.
• Allow earlier intervention for cases – identifying at-risk residents, such as credit accounts with decreasing balances, before arrears escalate using pre-set filters.
• Increase visibility and transparency on customer accounts – Caseload Manager’s powerful operational and management dashboards show all tenant debt in one view, providing visibility not just of arrears balances, but of officer activity, intervention impact and case progression in real time.

“It’s helpful to have everything on one dashboard. Officers can load whole cases up and see court costs, current tenant arrears, former tenant arrears, so they can then have that conversation just looking at one screen.” – Hayley Dickens, Income and Leasehold Manager.

After implementation, officers began to recognise the benefits of the system as it gradually became a part of their IT infrastructure. Whilst there were some teething problems initially, the organisation is now increasingly seeing team buy-in.

“Every month that passes, it’s better. I think that initially people are resistant to change. However, I think the team began to see the benefits in their daily workload installing confidence." – Lee Sturgess, Rents Team Leader.

“Cases can drop off where payment has been made, so officers aren’t having to manually review accounts unnecessarily.”

The Results

Financial impact:

• Arrears reduction: £640k reduction in arrears (October 2024 – May 2026).
• £186k debt reduced in the first year.
• Current tenant arrears reduced by 25%: supported by the improved visibility, prioritisation and earlier intervention enabled by Caseload Manager and its intelligent automation.

Operational impact:

• The team has developed growing confidence in intelligent automation and Caseload Manager's filtering capabilities.

• Early intervention is now possible with Caseload Manager – helping more residents access financial support mitigating low-level debt escalations.
• Using the customisable filters, officers are able to proactively target their case management and have earlier conversations with residents.

“The team can be more proactive and get into those lower arrears when we previously would have had to wait maybe a week or up to a couple of weeks on the old system to flag them up.” – Hayley Dickens, Income and Leasehold Manager.

“In principle, it gives our officers time back because it’s updating daily and removing cases daily that don’t need manual intervention.”

“It’s really handy to get an email address or mobile number from the same screen and send an email or SMS in the same instance, making sure we’re not jumping between multiple systems. It saves officer time and means we can use whichever communication channel is most appropriate.”

If you’d like to discuss how Voicescape can help streamline your income processes and reduce arrears debt at a time when income teams across the sector are facing growing arrears pressure, please get in touch with us today and we would be happy to support you.