Background
Formed as City West Housing Trust in 2008 and rebranded as ForHousing in 2019, ForHousing is a social housing provider owning 19,000 homes across the North West of England.
Their mission is to provide affordable, high-quality, and well-maintained homes where tenants feel safe, secure and supported. They are committed to delivering services that are easy to access and responsive to local needs, with tenant satisfaction forming the foundation of their long-term strategic plans.
The challenge
Following its formation as City West Housing Trust in 2008, through a largescale voluntary stock transfer of 14,690 rental properties from Salford City Council, ForHousing needed a reliable and scalable payments partner to support the management of such a significant housing portfolio. Managing high transaction volumes efficiently was essential, and automation was a key priority to reduce manual processing and ease internal administrative pressures.
Alongside this, ForHousing needed a payment provider capable of offering customers a wide range of simple, accessible and flexible payment options, ensuring convenience for a diverse customer base and supporting their commitment to deliver service excellence.
The solution
allpay provided ForHousing with a scalable, automated payment solution designed to manage high transaction volumes while reducing manual processing. Starting with Direct Debits, Contact Centre payments via Callpay, and Swipecards, the solution has expanded over time to give customers a wide choice of simple, secure, and accessible ways to pay.
The result
By handling both collection and compliance, allpay removed a significant operational burden, making the process far easier and far less labour-intensive compared with ForHousing managing payments themselves.
From their first use of Swipecards, Callpay and Direct Debits, ForHousing has continued to expand the allpay services they use. Today, their customers receive help from a wide range of simple, secure ways to pay – including Over-the-Counter payments at the Post Office, Payzone, or PayPoint outlets, Internet and Telephone payments, and more. ForHousing remain committed to broadening this offering further to meet the evolving needs of their customers.
Since the beginning of 2025, allpay has processed over 396,000 payments on behalf of ForHousing, including more than £79 million collected in payments. This includes:
- £3.7 million via our Callpay solution
- £2.3 million via our Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) service
- £53 million via our Direct Debit service
- £46,277 via Recurring Payments
- £28,982 through via our Branded Gateway service
- £9.9 million via our Over-the-Counter service
- £6.4 million via the allpayments web portal
- £3.6 million via the allpay mobile app
- £2.7 million via Pay-by-Link Plus
- £17,583 via SMS
These figures highlight the reliability and effectiveness of allpay’s solutions, as well as the varied preferences shown by their housing tenants.
Rebecca Buck, Head of Income Maximisation, ForHousing shared: “Working with allpay has transformed how we manage payment collections. Their accessible range of solutions has significantly reduced the manual workload for teams while giving customers more convenient and flexible ways to manage their paymen
Summary
ForHousing continues to receive help from streamlined payment processes, reduced manual intervention and a broad, accessible range of payment options for customers. With millions collected annually and services that continue to expand, allpay has proven to be a trusted long-term partner, supporting ForHousing’s mission to provide safe, secure and well-maintained homes while ensuring customers can manage their payments quickly, easily and confidently.
This longstanding relationship reflects not only the scale and developments of allpay’s solutions, but also their commitment to helping clients run more efficiently and deliver exceptional service to their customers making payments simple and accessible to all.
Rebecca Buck, Head of Income Maximisation, ForHousing commented: “allpay has played a key role in helping us modernise and streamline how customers manage their payments. Their solutions have significantly reduced the manual pressures on our teams while giving customers more choice, convenience and confidence in how they pay. It is a partnership that continues to support our commitment to delivering excellent services and improving the customer experience.”