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Introduction

The Housing Advice Unit at Waltham Forest Housing Services gives free advice on housing matters to all residents within the borough.

If you are experiencing problems you should get advice. You can do this by contacting the Housing Advice Unit, Citizens Advice Bureau or a solicitor specialising in housing.

When you seek advice, you should take any documentation that is relevant to your case. For example, your original tenancy agreement, court papers, correspondence from your landlord, housing benefit, or solicitor. Even if you do not have any papers, you should still get advice.

When reading this information, it is important to remember that the laws concerning housing and welfare rights are very complicated. The information here cannot explain everything; it is intended to provide a guide to enable you to exercise your rights.

If your mortgage lender is taking you to court in less than two weeks or if you have received a Bailiffs Warrant, please contact the  Housing Advice Unit straight away, either by telephone (via Ascham Homes Direct on 020 8496 4197) or in person. We can often help you to get court hearings or evictions postponed or cancelled to allow time to work out the best solution to your problem. Often lenders who have refused to agree to this when you ask them yourself may change their minds if an Advice Agency asks them to do so.

What you need to do

You will need to complete a Mortgage Questionnaire, which is available from the Housing Advice Unit and return it as quickly as possible – telephone us or call in at our offices if you need any help with this.

Collect all of the papers you have in regard to your home and your finances – for example your mortgage agreement, and statements from your lender, court papers, letters from the Benefits Agency (DSS), wage slips, and accounts.

Get an up-to-date valuation of your home. Ask at least two firms of estate agents to visit and give you a written valuation. (They will usually do this for no charge but ask to make sure).

Keep in touch with your lenders. If they are demanding arrears payments let them know that you are getting specialist advice and will soon be making proposals to sort out the problems.

How we can help

Our Housing Advice Unit may be able to help you in the following ways:

  • Increasing your income – for example, if you are on Income Support we may be able to help you increase the help you receive with housing costs by getting your claim backdated to an earlier date, or getting extra money for loans the Benefits Agency are making payments towards
  • Reducing your expenses – for example, by advising on a cheaper type of mortgage
  • Advising on other debts (though in some cases we may have to refer you to a specialist money advice agency)
  • Advising on your legal rights – for example, your rights to maintenance payments from a former partner
  • Advising on the best way to deal with your home if you are unable to keep it – for example, how to reduce legal costs or whether to put the house up for sale or wait for a court repossession order
  • Advising on alternative housing

Rehousing by the Council

You will need individual advice about this but the following general points may be helpful.

In most cases, if you own a property, we will only consider you for rehousing after our Housing Advice Unit has looked into your situation and decided that it is impossible (for financial or other reasons) for you to keep the home you own.

We take into account any home you may have a legal interest in, not just the home you are living in now. So, for example, we would need details of the home that your former partner lives in if you have separated.

You can lose rights to rehousing by the Council if you do not do your best to keep a home that you own. There is a risk of this if, for example, you ignore letters from your lenders about your arrears, or if you sell a home you own or hand it over to a former partner.

To avoid this risk get advice first

If you do not have a ‘priority need’ then in most cases it is not likely that the Council will re-house you. A household is in priority need if, for example, it includes: children of school age or younger; a pregnant woman; a person aged 60 or more; a person with a serious special need (such as a disability or psychiatric condition).

If you do not have a priority need but are going to lose your home we will do our best to help you find other accommodation but we will not consider you for Council or Housing Association accommodation.

If you do qualify for rehousing by the Council we may offer you the tenancy of either a Council, housing association, or privately rented home – or in some cases alternatives such as temporary hostel accommodation or advice to help you buy another home on one of our rent deposit schemes.

Leaflets online

The above leaflets are all available free of charge, by downloading from this web site, by post or in person from our office.

The text for this web page has been adapted from the 'Mortgage Problems' leaflet.

Leaflet giving from the Housing Advice Unit giving information and advice on dealing with mortgage problems

Download the Mortgage Problems leaflet (816KB PDF file).

How to contact us

Housing Services

Cedar Wood House
2d Fulbourne Road
Walthamstow  E17 4GG  (map)


Tel 020 8496 3000
Fax 020 8496 5431
Email housing.advice@walthamforest.gov.uk

Our office is located on Fulbourne Road.

Open to personal callers: Monday-Thursday, 9am-4.30pm; Fridays 10am-4.30pm

Telephone enquiries: 020 8496 5575, Monday-Thursday 9am-5.15pm; Friday 9am-5pm