Guidance

Promoting mobility through mutual exchange: realising the potential

Published 10 February 2014

Applies to England

Why promote mutual exchange?

A mutual exchange is when 2 social tenants agree to swap properties with each other. A mutual exchange can take place between tenants of the same or different landlords living anywhere in the UK.

Mutual exchange holds benefits for landlords and tenants. For tenants it can represent a more realistic option of securing a move than waiting for a transfer. For landlords, it can help with efforts to maximise efficient use of stock to best meet housing need and minimise problems such as rent arrears. Mutual exchange can also provide major benefits for other services. For example, helping a tenant to move through mutual exchange to be closer to family and friends can reduce demand on health and social care services and result in cost savings.

How can landlords help promote mutual exchange?

Seven key steps that local authorities and social landlords can take to help promote mobility through mutual exchange are outlined below. These reflect the lessons learnt by the local authorities and social landlords that took part in a demonstration project run by the Department for Communities and Local Government. The project took place between 2011 to 2013 and explored what works in promoting mobility via mutual exchange.

1. Make the case for mutual exchange

Promoting mutual exchange requires commitment in terms of time, effort and resources. This is unlikely to be forthcoming if a local authority and its partner landlords are unclear about the costs and benefits. It is therefore important to outline the benefits for tenants, landlords and other service providers of an increase in mutual exchanges and to make a clear business case for investing to promote mutual exchange. This will require local authorities and landlords to collect robust data about the number and profile of mutual exchanges taking place to assist them in assessing the benefits.

2. Take a partnership approach

Mutual exchange typically involves tenants moving relatively short distances. The more landlords in an area that are actively promoting and supporting the mutual exchange process the more opportunities tenants will have to secure a move. This will demand co-operation, communication and co-ordination between the local authority, landlords and other service providers to ensure a consistent and reliable system that minimises barriers and maximises the opportunities provided by mutual exchange.

One approach is to work through existing partnership arrangements linked to the local lettings scheme, which local authorities usually co-ordinate and manage as part of their duty to maintain an allocation scheme. Management of a local mutual exchange scheme is a natural extension of this responsibility. Landlords should also be open to tenants who may want to move longer distances for family, work or other reasons. It is therefore important that landlords provide tenants with access to the services of a mutual exchange provider that is participating in HomeSwap Direct and supports cross-boundary moves.

3. Raise tenant awareness and understanding

Many tenants are unaware or unclear about the possibilities provided by mutual exchange. Tenants who are unaware or uncertain about the opportunities are unlikely to engage with the process, reducing the pool of properties from which tenants seeking a mutual exchange might secure a match. Increasing knowledge and awareness is therefore critical to efforts to promote mobility through mutual exchange.

Flyers, leaflets, articles in tenant newsletters and advertising on buses and on local radio can help raise awareness of mutual exchange. However, direct contact with tenants is likely to prove the most effective means of raising awareness and interest in seeking an exchange. Housing officers should be briefed about mutual exchange so that they are able to inform tenants that they come into contact with about the opportunities provided and how to go about seeking an exchange.

Staff might also actively reach out to tenants and share information about mutual exchange and how to register, for example, through road shows and information stalls in shopping centres. Speed-dating events are another effective way of promoting mutual exchange to tenants, particularly when targeted at tenants actively seeking a move or in a situation likely to prompt interest in moving (for example, under-occupiers who might wish to move due to welfare reform changes). They involve issuing invitations to tenants to attend a session where they are introduced to mutual exchange, can find out about opportunities for moving, and are assisted to register and search for possible matches.

4. Minimise the costs and simplify the process

Most social landlords subscribe to a mutual exchange service, which provides their tenants with free access to a web-based mutual exchange scheme that holds information about other tenants seeking an exchange. However, different landlords subscribe to different mutual exchange providers. Tenants of 1 landlord have therefore sometimes struggled to view information about tenants of other landlords who are also seeking an exchange. Until recently, the only option was for tenants to register and pay a fee to access different mutual exchange providers. This complicated the process and increased the costs of pursuing a mutual exchange. In response, the government launched HomeSwap Direct in 2011.

HomeSwap Direct allows tenants looking to move to see whether there are any matches both on the website that their landlord subscribes to and on the websites of other mutual exchange providers who participate in HomeSwap Direct. This increases the likelihood of a tenant finding a relevant match and the chances of securing an exchange. As a result, tenants now have free access to the full details of matches on the site their landlord subscribes to and, after seeing the number of properties available, can choose whether they wish to subscribe to other sites to view full contact details.

There are also ways that local authorities and landlords can work together to further minimise the costs and simplify the process of mutual exchange. Some tenants want to move longer distances to a different town or city, but most are seeking a move within the local area. Any initiative that makes it easier and cheaper for tenants to find out about properties in the area will increase the number of successful mutual exchanges. For example:

• the local authority and other local landlords might register with the same mutual exchange provider to guarantee their tenants free access to a large pool of possible matches
• local authority landlords might consider providing all tenants free access to their mutual exchange site
• agreements might be brokered between landlords providing free access to full details of matches for tenants of either landlord

5. Support tenants to find a match and secure a move

In practice, many tenants will require help negotiating their way through the mutual exchange process. Without this help, some tenants are unlikely to move via a mutual exchange.

The challenges that tenants can encounter include:

• accessing and using mutual exchange websites
• reviewing matches on an on-going basis
• managing inquiries about their property
• negotiating with other tenants
• managing the move
• home-making following the move (for example, repairs and decoration)

One approach is to target support and assistance to help tenants overcome these challenges at the most vulnerable tenants, as well focusing on promoting moves of the greatest strategic value to the landlord (for example, targeting under-occupiers). A helpline is one way of providing help and advice, but experience suggests that many tenants prefer face to face contact with a housing officer when seeking help with a move.

Moving home is a daunting prospect for some tenants. Concerns include the costs and practicalities of moving, worries about the condition of the new accommodation and the costs of putting right any problems. These concerns can undermine willingness to consider a mutual exchange. Financial and practical assistance might be necessary to help tenants overcome these worries. This might include help with the move, carrying out basic repairs and help connecting utilities so that people are not moving into poor conditions. This would ensure that the mutual exchange process is comparable, in terms of costs and outcomes for the tenant, with the transfer process.

6. Commit staff time and resources

A series of tasks are critical to efforts to maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of the mutual exchange process:

• promoting support for mutual exchange among partner landlords
• securing the commitment of local authority managers and elected members
• reaching agreement with partners regarding the specifics of the local approach, including roles and responsibilities, policy, practice and resourcing
• overseeing the development and the ongoing management of local systems and processes
• raising knowledge and awareness about mutual exchange among housing officers and within other relevant services
• marketing mutual exchange to tenants
• guiding tenants through the mutual exchange process

Who will lead on delivering these tasks? One option is to assign responsibility for promoting mutual exchange to the local lettings team, who already work in partnership with staff from the different landlord organisations.

It is important that housing officers, and staff in allied services, are familiar with the opportunities provided by mutual exchange and the practicalities of the process so they can provide advice and signpost clients to further information and assistance. Housing officers need to understand the practicalities of the mutual exchange process and the opportunities it offers, so they can inform and advise relevant tenants. Services working with people requiring a move, such as occupational therapists and other health and social care services, need to be aware of how the mutual exchange process operates, how it can support service delivery and provide cost savings. There is also value in actively promoting knowledge and understanding of mutual exchange within public-facing services likely to come into contact with tenants. This might include council one-stop-shop or customer contact centre staff.

7. Ensure mutual exchange is a viable and attractive proposition

Various steps can be taken to make mutual exchange a more attractive and viable proposition for tenants. Financial incentives might be introduced, for example, to encourage tenants to downsize via a mutual exchange (although experience suggests that relatively small incentives of £100 or £200 have little impact). These might mirror the financial incentives sometimes made available to certain groups of transferring tenants (for example under-occupiers). Landlords might also look to minimise the risks associated with an exchange for tenants. This might include undertaking repairs on exchanged properties on a similar basis to transferred properties, in response to tenant concerns about being liable for the condition of their new property.

Landlord flexibility in relation to the grounds on which consent for a mutual exchange is withheld can also increase the number of exchanges taking place. This involves weighing up the costs and benefits of consenting to an exchange, rather than rigidly enforcing guidelines. For example, does it make sense to withhold consent for a mutual exchange because a tenant has modest rent arrears, even though the exchange would result in the tenant moving into a smaller property where they would be able to afford to pay the rent and less likely to accrue arrears? However, if a flexible approach is to be taken it is helpful if all landlords in an area adopt a common approach in a bid to ensure clarity and consistency in the way tenants are treated.

These key lessons are drawn from the findings of research conducted by a team from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University into the experiences of 12 local authorities or partnerships of authorities selected to take part in the demonstration project by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Insights into the effectiveness and efficiency of different approaches to promoting mobility were gathered through analysis of lessons learnt by local authorities and landlords promoting mutual exchange, a survey of tenant experiences and analysis of management data. Read the full project report.