A PENSIONER was left traumatised after he was wrongly told he had rent arrears of more than £4000.

Despite only paying rent of £69.85 a week for his place, David Rhodes was told by Clarion Housing he had racked up a debt of £4364.10.

The 68-year-old was first sent a warning letter on July 24 for his home in Laisterdyke.

A further notice sent on August 1 caused Mr Rhodes to panic, even though he was adamant his payments were up-to-date.

He said: “I felt anxious, mental anguish, worry, fear.

“I was threatened with home repossession, that’s the worrying thing.”

The letter read: “It’s important that you immediately pay your outstanding rent and other charges. If you don’t pay, pay late or don’t pay enough your account will go further into debt and this will lead to legal action to repossess your home.

“Don’t ignore this letter.”

The suggested figure was more than 62 times more than Mr Rhode’s weekly rent.

This would mean the pensioner had over a year’s worth of debt and he knew that could not be the case.

That provoked the pensioner to take action and started to check back through his records for previous years.

Mr Rhodes said: “I’ve always kept up with rent.

“I thought, how can I owe rent. I’ve not missed a payment in ten years of living here.

“What I did was, went back to 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and had every receipt for that period.”

Having found the proof, Mr Rhodes made a formal complaint to the housing company on August 12.

Eight days later, the pensioner received his response.

His account was in fact £76.61 in credit.

Clarion Housing put the mix-up down to an error due to a new system.

Part of the statement read: “The Customer Accounts team have implemented a new system where some errors have been identified and resolved, the arrears letter you received was sent in error.”

Mr Rhodes was happy for the issue to be resolved but still feels it’s just not good enough.

The pensioner admits the situation still causes him stress.

He worries what might have happened, if he hadn’t made the complaint, and is disgusted it took that motivate the team to “carry out their basic duty correctly.”

The pensioner said: “Do your job properly.

“If they had referenced that rent statement, that letter would not have been sent would it.

“If they’d done their job properly, they would have known my rent was in credit.

“How do they get four thousand in arrears?”

A spokesperson for Clarion Housing Group said: “These letters were sent in error to Mr Rhodes and we take full responsibility for the administrative mistake.

“We apologised to Mr Rhodes as soon as we discovered the error and are very sorry for any distress this has caused.”