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Clarion apologises after accidentally overcharging hundreds of residents
The UK’s largest housing association has apologised after mistakenly taking extra money from hundreds of residents through direct debit.
Clarion Housing Group, which owns and manages around 125,000 homes, confirmed to Inside Housing that 851 of its leaseholders and shared ownership residents have been affected in the past few days.
The amount accidentally taken from accounts has varied, reaching up to £500 in some cases.
Clarion said the issue was caused by “an error in our system” which has now been fixed. It is contacting all affected residents and promised to pay refunds “quickly and in full”.
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A spokesperson for Clarion said: “An error in our system has meant that a group of Clarion leaseholders and shared owners mistakenly had additional money taken from their direct debit in the past few days.
“This issue with the system has been fixed and we are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.
“We are contacting every individual affected to ensure refunds are paid quickly and in full. If any of our customers has incurred a bank fee as a result of a mistake, Clarion will also cover these charges.”
Clarion recently switched away from using payment services firm Allpay to collecting newly set up direct debits directly.
Allpay, which works with more than 500 housing associations according to its website, said its services had nothing to do with the issue and was not aware of any issues with the direct debits it manages.
Update: at 19.17pm 06/03/20 the story was updated to make it clearer that the charging issue was not related to Allpay.
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