SOCIAL housing landlord Incommunities failed to set rents correctly – resulting in hundreds of tenants being overcharged, it has emerged.

The issue came to light when the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) said the company had breached the rent standard.

An external investigation has been launched.

Incommunities – which manages more than 22,600 homes across Yorkshire, predominately in the Bradford district – made a self-referral and the RSH found the firm had set rents incorrectly for “hundreds of tenants”.

A notice said: “The housing association had wrongly classified some of its homes as supported housing. It also set some of its rents incorrectly on re-let and did not cap rents on some of its homes in line with requirements.

“As a result of those errors, a significant number of tenants have been overcharged.

“Upon uncovering these issues, and in agreement with the regulator, Incommunities has committed to an external investigation into its rent-setting and is developing an action plan.

“This work will identify the full scale of the errors and number of tenants overcharged. The affected tenants will be reimbursed by the provider.”

Incommunities’ chief executive, Rachael Dennis, said: “Following my appointment as chief executive in 2021, I instigated a thorough review of our services to ensure we are providing a quality, customer-focused service.

“We self-referred to the regulator after uncovering historic issues with how we calculated some rents and service charges.

“The regulatory notice which has now been published is fair, and essentially presents what we already knew, incorporating a range of issues which we are working hard to resolve.

“We have put a robust strategy in place to raise the performance of the business by setting out clear and measurable service improvement goals, we are working closely with external advisors to ensure that this situation is rectified as a matter of urgency and putting in place safeguards and improvements to make sure these issues do not happen again.

“Although there is clearly more work to do, I’m pleased that the regulator noted the immediate steps Incommunities Group’s board and leadership made to address these failings, and our willingness to take further steps to resolve issues.

“We would like to apologise to our customers for the failures in our approach, which have led to the regulator’s notice.

“We are working with affected tenants and our local authority partners to ensure that any overcharges are returned as quickly as possible.”