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

How do Universal Credit managed payments to landlords work?

An Alternative Payment Arrangement: the rent element, and separately a deduction.

Through an Alternative Payment Arrangement. A landlord or tenant can ask DWP to pay the housing element of Universal Credit direct to the landlord instead of to the tenant — a managed payment. A separate mechanism, a third party deduction, takes an amount towards arrears from the rest of the award. They are two different things and are applied for on the same form.

The short version
MechanismAlternative Payment Arrangement (APA)
Managed payment to landlordThe housing element, paid direct. Covers ongoing rent, not arrears
Third party deductionA separate deduction towards arrears, taken from the standard allowance
Typical triggerRent arrears at a level DWP treats as putting the tenancy at risk, or a vulnerability factor
Current ratesPublished by DWP and subject to change — including mid-year. This page does not quote one, for the reason below

Two mechanisms, commonly conflated

A managed payment redirects money the tenant is already entitled to for rent. A third party deduction takes an additional amount towards the arrears balance. A tenant can have one, both, or neither, and the arrears position looks very different depending on which is in place.

Conflating them is the source of a familiar operational error: an account showing steady arrears reduction is assumed to be on a repayment arrangement when it is actually on a deduction, and gets chased for not having one.

Why this page does not tell you the deduction rate

Deduction rates and the overall cap on deductions from a Universal Credit award are set by DWP and have changed repeatedly, including partway through a financial year rather than at the usual April uprating.

A percentage published on a page like this would be wrong within months and quoted for years. The current figures live in DWP guidance, and that is where to read them. What is stable, and what this page is for, is the mechanism.

The arrears-process consequence

Payment timing under Universal Credit does not match a weekly rent charge, so an account can look in arrears for most of every month purely because of when money arrives. Chasing that is a contact that should never have happened, and it is a large share of what a badly-tuned arrears queue contains.

The Pre-Action Protocol also discourages issuing a claim where a benefit claim is outstanding and the tenant has provided what was asked of them.

In the product

What Income Ally does about it

Income Ally derives the payment cycle from how a tenant actually pays rather than from how they are billed, and you choose which rhythm raises an alert. “Missed a payment” then means missed theirs.

Benefit-related parameters are configurable rather than compiled in, specifically because these figures move mid-year. Changing one is an admin screen, and the change is attributed and dated.

Where this stops

What it does not do

Also asked

Related questions

What is an Alternative Payment Arrangement?

An arrangement under which DWP changes how Universal Credit is paid, most commonly by paying the housing element direct to the landlord, by changing the payment frequency, or by splitting a joint claim.

Does a managed payment clear rent arrears?

No. A managed payment to landlord covers ongoing rent. Arrears are addressed by a separate third party deduction, which is applied for at the same time but works differently.

How much can DWP deduct for rent arrears?

The rate and the overall cap on deductions are set by DWP and have changed more than once, including partway through a financial year. Check current DWP guidance rather than any third-party page, including this one.

Can a tenant be in arrears purely because of Universal Credit timing?

Yes. Where the payment cycle does not line up with the rent charge cycle, an account can show arrears for most of a month without the tenant having missed anything. Treating that as non-payment generates avoidable contact.

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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