27th February 2023
As a Plus Dane customer you will soon receive your annual rent review communication for 2023/24.
From this year, in response to the rising cost of living, the Government has announced a change to how social housing rent will be calculated. As a result, this year you will see an increase in your rent of 7%. In line with the cap the Government has put in place. If you pay service charges you may also see an increase in some of these costs.
In previous years, rent for social housing tenants was calculated each year by the Consumer Price Index, plus 1%. Therefore, without the cap, customers across the country would have seen a rent increase of approximately 11% this year.
However, we understand that 7% is still a significant increase, and it was an extremely tough decision for us to make. The rent and service charges you pay enables Plus Dane to provide the services you receive as well as carrying out the activity to keep you safe in your home including gas and electrical testing. We also invest in our homes to keep them warm, safe and secure.
We regularly check that the charges you are paying for your home services provide good value for money. We will decrease your charges where we are able to, but in the current economic climate it is more likely that your service charges will rise to cover the increasing costs of the services you receive.
We are all experiencing these increasing costs for materials and energy due to the external environment. We are typically seeing increases to the things we need to purchase to deliver our services of around 10%. Your 7% rent increase will go some way towards covering these increased costs.
The communications you receive will provide all the information you need and explain what you may need to do and what support and help is available. You can check out all the support information on our Rent Review FAQ page HERE.
