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English regulator confirms 15% fee rise for associations
England’s Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has confirmed its plans to increase fees for housing associations by 15% in 2020/21.
Updated guidance published on Friday said the RSH expects to make £14.74m from the fees over the year, compared with £12.75m in 2019/20.
Fiona MacGregor, chief executive of the RSH, announced in July last year that its fees would be hiked in a bid to keep pace with the demand of the sector’s greater market focus and the emergence of for-profit providers.
The new guidance confirms that fees for housing associations owning 1,000 homes or more according to the RSH’s Statistical Data Return will be £5.42 per social housing unit in 2020/21, up from £4.72 in 2019/20.
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Fees for small providers with less than 1,000 homes will stay at £300 a year and the initial registration fee will not be increased from the current rate of £2,500.
According to the updated guidance, registered providers that are part of a group structure in which the parent entity is registered with the RSH will be charged a single fee to the parent. Where the parent is unregistered, the fee is collected from each individual provider in the group.
Invoices will be issued in March, with fees due as a single payment within 30 days. Smaller housing associations “with cash flow considerations” can request to pay their fees in quarterly instalments, per the guidance.
The RSH has proposed increasing its budget for 2020/21 by £2.8m, paid for through £2m extra in fees and £800,000 through grant in aid from the government.
It estimates that it needs another 30 staff across several teams, plus £700,000 of non-staff costs such as IT and external legal advice.
Fees were originally introduced by the regulator from October 2017, with the body committing to a maximum 1% annual increase in the total level up to the end of March 2020.
The new guidance said fees “will be reviewed annually to ensure that fees align with the costs of providing the service”.
