There are a few challenges facing us in setting rent levels for next year. We no longer have income from Right to Buy sales, which have previously been used to reduce borrowing and loan charges. Staff costs are increasing due to pay inflation as is building inflation and construction costs, which all impact on the cost of the service.
We have additional income from rents from new Council house building, but we also have increasing loan charges as a result of borrowing money for investment in improvements to existing homes and building new homes. All of this means that we will need a higher rent increase than last year in order to maintain services, but we still hope that this can be below the level of inflation, which is currently 3.3% (according to the Consumer Price Index – October 2018)
In 2019/20 we want to spend more on:
1. Improvements to your homes. In 2019-20 we hope to invest 13.6m in our capital programme.
This includes:
£1m on adaptations such as walk-in showers, handrails
£5.4m on upgrades/replacements which will include approximately 170 new bathrooms, 250 new kitchens and 400 new windows and doors
£4.6m on energy efficiency works including over 450 new heating systems
£2m on external fabric works such as harling and guttering and including 100 roofing up-grades.
2. Improvements to housing estates. We have set a budget in 2018/19 of £630,091 to improve housing estates (e.g. new fencing, works to garage areas), but we continue to receive feedback that tenants want further improvements to the environment around their homes. We would like your views on whether we should increase the amount of money we spend in estates improvements.
