Income Ally
Platform
What the product is, and what it costs
The product Overview Stay human. Stay compliant. The queue Built overnight, and it explains itself. Rules and thresholds Readable, and yours to change. The empathy agent It drafts for a person. It decides nothing. Former tenants The six-year clock, enforced not reported.
Commercial Pricing On the size of the book, not per seat. Security and data Isolation in the database, not a WHERE clause. About Who builds it, and the rules we write by.
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Roles
Arrears software is bought by a committee
Finance and leadership CFO Can you break the arrears figure down? Chief Executive The regulator’s questions, answered first.
Income and service Head of Income A worklist that says why. Income Officer Without the cases that fix themselves. CX Director Nobody chased down a channel they cannot use.
Assurance and technical Regulatory Compliance Where the law says stop, it stops. IT & Data Lead Readable rules, a human in every decision.
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Answers
Arrears and the law, answered with the statute named
Holds and the clock Chasing former tenants Six years. What restarts it, and what doesn’t. Breathing Space Contact, interest and enforcement all stop. Mental health moratorium No 60-day cap, and usually no end date.
Possession and duties Pre-Action Protocol Judged when the claim is issued. Ground 8 It does not exist against a secure tenant. The equality duty Due regard, at the time, recorded.
Reporting and benefits Tenant Satisfaction Measures Which ones an income team moves. Universal Credit payments Managed payment and deduction are not the same.
Reference Glossary Twenty-two terms, statute named. Buyer’s guide Twelve questions for any vendor, us included.
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Legal spine
Every duty, and where it stops
What it does On screen, today Eight duties wired into what it will and won’t do. Evidenced, not certified It holds the record. A court decides if it is enough.
Where it stops What it does not do Nine of them, including a gap we would rather you read. Words you won’t find “Compliant”. “Approved”. “Guaranteed”.
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Arrears and the law

What does the public sector equality duty mean for rent arrears?

Due regard, at the time, recorded — or it cannot be shown.

Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 requires a body exercising public functions to have due regard to eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations, when it makes a decision. In arrears, that means considering the effect of recovery action on people with protected characteristics before taking it — and being able to show you did.

The short version
StatuteEquality Act 2010, s.149
What it requiresDue regard, in substance and with rigour, at the time the decision is made
What it does not requireA particular outcome. It is a duty to consider, not a duty to decide a certain way
Related dutiess.15 discrimination arising from disability, s.20 reasonable adjustments, and Article 8 proportionality for public authority landlords
EvidenceContemporaneous. Regard shown only in a document written after the decision carries very little weight

“Due regard” has a shape

The courts have consistently held that the duty must be exercised in substance, with rigour and an open mind, at the time of the decision — not as a box-ticking exercise, and not retrospectively. A landlord that thought carefully and wrote nothing down is, evidentially, in the same position as one that never looked.

That single fact is why the duty is really a records problem in an arrears context. The thinking may well have happened; if it cannot be produced, it cannot be relied on.

Who it binds

The duty applies to public authorities, and to others in so far as they exercise public functions. Local authority landlords are squarely within it. Whether a particular private registered provider function is a public function has been litigated and is fact-sensitive, so take your own advice rather than a general answer.

Two different records

An arrears process generates two things that are easily collapsed into one, and should not be:

Only the second discharges anything. Reporting the first as though it were the second is how a public sector equality duty gets reported as satisfied when it has not been.

Reasonable adjustments are a separate, harder duty

Section 20 requires adjustments to avoid substantial disadvantage — including in how a landlord communicates. A recorded need for post rather than email, for Braille, large print or an interpreter, is not a preference; it is the adjustment. Sending down a channel the person cannot use is a breach whether or not anybody meant it.

In the product

What Income Ally does about it

Income Ally holds a dated, attributed, unrewritable record of the equality impact assessment and of every reasonable adjustment offered, with its outcome. The database grants no DELETE on either, so a record that later becomes inconvenient cannot be quietly removed.

The two figures above are counted separately across the whole book. And where a resident has recorded communication needs, an officer must confirm they have read them before an email can be sent — the confirmation stores a snapshot of what the needs were at that moment, and stops counting if they change.

Where this stops

What it does not do

Also asked

Related questions

Does the public sector equality duty apply to housing associations?

It applies to public authorities, and to others in so far as they exercise public functions. Local authority landlords are within it. Whether a given private registered provider function counts as a public function has been litigated and is fact-sensitive.

Does the equality duty stop a landlord seeking possession?

No. It is a duty to have due regard when making the decision, not a duty to reach a particular outcome. A landlord can lawfully proceed having properly considered the impact.

Is recording a tenant's disability enough to show due regard?

No. Recording a protected characteristic and making an assessment with an adjustment offered are different things, and only the second evidences that the duty was discharged.

When does due regard have to happen?

At the time the decision is made. Consideration documented after the event carries very little weight, which is why contemporaneous records matter more here than almost anywhere else in an arrears process.

Last reviewed 17 September 2026. General information on the law in England and Wales, not legal advice on a particular case.

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Every duty it enforces