Nathan Cousins
South West
Housing Professional : Specialising in Rents & Service Charges
Recent activity
Comments (1)
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Comment on: Tenants face 8 per cent rent hike
Time for an undoubtedly unpopular comment.
This article talks of high increases being applied but in my mind does not provide the correct context in relation to Target rents.
Properties receiving the highest increase - i.e. RPI + £2 are not at the target rent value for their property.
Therefore they have benefited the most from lower rent charges since the introduction of target rents in 2002.
Taking this logic a step further, properties receiving either a flat RPI uplift or even the RPI increase less £2 are actually the properties who have been charged the most since the introduction of target rents.
So higher increase in current year = better value since 2002
Discussions (1)
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Affordable Rents & Service Charge Management
I have been contemplating how service charges will work under the affordable rents regime and would appreciate any advice people can offer.
I see potential confusion in operation, mainly b
Posts (4)
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Posted in: The new front page layout - is it Marmite?
As a daily user of the site its a thumbs up from me
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Posted in: Affordable Rents & Service Charge Management
I have been contemplating how service charges will work under the affordable rents regime and would appreciate any advice people can offer.
I see potential confusion in operation, mainly because
- "The rent level should be assessed according to the individual characteristics of the property, It is to be calculated inclusive of service charges." (Briefing: NHF New Tenure Arrangements)
With this in mind how will service charges be acknowledged in the tenant agreement?
Can you operate a variable service under this charge model?
How will tenants who are charged in this way be able to understand the services they are receiving in relation to their gross charge, when truly speaking services are a notional part of the rent?
What if there are mojor changes to the services provided that would necessitate an increase in the service charge that should then be passed on to tenants? How can this be managed when the increase mechanism is an RPI linked % uplift.
How are social landlords going to provide meaningful infromation on service ccharge cost performance under this charging regime?
There are more questions that I could ask, but I though the above might start off the debate.
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Posted in: Service Charges and Whats Eligable For HB - your experience???
It is quite surprising but very true that LA's do have local authority on eligible services.
What is and isn't eligible is open to debate, the purpose of not having a prescriptive list in my mind is that you would always need to amend, so having a guiding set of principle to cover service charges would logically appear to be beneficial.
The problem with this system is however, that this leaves individual LA's open to offer their own interpretation of how these principles are applied.
I think that all social landlords need to make sure they have good relationships with their LA's and communicate on services they are charging for to ensure they are able to recover all charged costs and not to leave shortfalls in HB where there should not really be one.
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Posted in: Service Charges and Whats Eligable For HB - your experience???
I have come across this before and it was most frustrating to fix. An un-named LA stopped paying for all GM contracts, referencing an court decision that was clearly not directly comparable, as it related to the maintenance of a personal garden.
In short I did the following, got agreement from the tenants to make a complaint to the omsbudsman on their behalf as they need to raise the complaint not the landlord. After 9 months of going back an forth they were made to pay for GM and backdate the monies owed.
I have worked with over 150 LA's in relation to services and some are starting to take a more critical view of eligible services, omitting various aspects of chargeable costs.