A group of four Stobswell letting agents have called a meeting tonight, at which they hope a council officer will be able to provide answers to their questions and complaints.

One Stobswell agent, who represents around 80 Dundee landlords, maintaining their properties and collecting rent, contradicted the city council’s finance director David Dorward, who told the Evening Telegraph on Friday that things have been steadily improving since September.

Mr Dorward conceded that computer problems had caused a massive backlog of housing benefit applications, but said staff were now on top of the situation.

The Stobswell agent, who asked not to be named, said, “We have noticed no improvement at all. We are still waiting for applications to be processed that were sent in July.

“We are getting regular phone calls from landlords wondering where their rental income is, and we have to phone the housing benefit office to find out what has happened to it.

“We’re accused by landlords of not doing our job properly when it’s the housing benefit department’s fault. I can’t get running my business for sorting out housing benefit problems. It’s absolutely shocking. I’ve just got a cheque through for an application that was submitted in July.

“It’s taken so long that the tenant has had to reapply for housing benefit, which means the landlord will have another long wait before he sees any more money.

“I’ve been told by housing benefit staff that I should serve my tenants with notice to quit their properties.

“If the tenant goes to the department with the notice to quit, they are pushed to the top of the pile of applications.

“What kind of way is that to run a business?

“The only thing that seems to work is to complain to a local councillor and then any problems seem to get sorted out that day.

“We can honestly say that it is getting so bad that we might have to start refusing housing benefit tenants and lots of other letting agents are thinking the same way.”

Some letting agents said the situation had deteriorated since the council employed a call centre company in England to deal with enquiries.

Whereas it was once possible to speak to staff at the Dundee office, calls now go directly to the call centre and agents say that staff there “don’t have a clue” about their applications.

Dock Street agent, Carol Whyte, said she had inherited about a dozen housing benefit tenants who were good tenants but would no longer manage properties with housing benefit occupants because of the problems associated with the system.

“Letting agents with a lot of housing benefit tenants will be having a nightmare: there are some real horror stories out there,” she said.

“We had a case where the housing benefit tenant asked for the rent to be made payable to us.

“The council office made the cheque out to us and sent it to the tenant.

“He paid us the money and sent the cheque back to the council and the housing benefit office then suspended all our accounts even though the error was theirs.

“We found out about this purely by accident otherwise our landlords wouldn’t have had any money for weeks while it was all sorted out.

“There are a lot of housing benefit tenants who are trying hard but there are also drug addicts and when you have one of those as a tenant and the housing benefit goes directly to them it’s just money down the drain.

“The council’s housing benefit staff would be as well just pouring the rent out of their window and onto the street because it would have as much chance going to the landlord that way.

“The whole system in Dundee is in chaos and if it goes on letting agents will stop handling housing benefit people and then it would be a job for the council finding them somewhere to live.”

Paul Letley, the partner in charge of property management at J & E Shepherd, said landlords and letting agents appeared to be the victims of a staff rotation policy in the housing benefit office which meant there was no continuity when it came to dealing with enquiries.

The council, he said, seemed to have teams of eight people which it rotated on a weekly basis.

“Every time you phone, someone takes up the case afresh and looks at it on their computer screen,” he said.

“Everyone in the department hates being on the phone or manning desks so the rotation system is the only way of keeping them in these horrible jobs.

“However, it must be a very inefficient system and makes it very difficult for people phoning with inquiries.”

Mr Letley said he sympathised with the department’s computer problems that led to a backlog of housing benefit applications and believed the situation was getting better.

But he said the Data Protection Act, which limits the amount of information that can be release about an application or tenant, “had a lot to answer for”.

“I can sympathise with landlords who have complained about cheques going to the tenant instead of the landlord as they will never see that money again,” he said.

“Although the contract is between the council and the tenant, it is very irresponsible not to tell the agent because if it had been known the cheque would be going to the tenant, he or she would never have been given the tenancy in the first place.

“Sometimes, despite signing a mandate saying that the housing benefit cheque should go to the landlord, the tenant cancels this at the last moment so that he gets the cheque himself.

“By the time we hear of it, the tenant can be long gone with the money.

“Although the council may be paying him housing benefit at another address, they refuse to tell us where he is living so we have no way of getting the money back.

“The council has also said that the housing benefit is actually the tenant’s but, in cases where there has been incorrect overpayment of housing benefit to the tenant and the department wants to reclaim it, it’s the landlord they always go after instead of the tenant.

“If the tenant has fraudulently claimed the money, the council should be chasing the tenant for it, not the landlord or agent who has provided the property in good faith.

“It’s just much easier for the council to go after the landlord.”

Dundee City Council was asked to comment on the latest claims from letting agents, but declined to do so.