Our new rent and service charge booklet is more personalised to you, your home and your estate, and is easier to read and understand.
A better solution
Over the past few years we’ve looked at a range of ways to improve how we manage your service charge.
Many of them have focused on accuracy, and we will continue to work towards achieving our goal of making sure your service charge is 100% accurate each year.
We’ve been improving year-on-year, and these new booklets are a major step forward in making service charge more transparent and accessible.
Clarity and transparency
This is your rent and service charge. You’ll be able to see exactly what you’re paying, whether it has gone up or down compared to last year, and why.
You won’t need to read through commentary about charges that don’t apply to your home - you’ll see what relates to you with more detailed explanations and breakdowns.
Your booklet will have everything you need to know in one convenient place.
Value for money
The new booklets are not only clearer, and with more information relevant to you, they use less paper than the previous loose-leaf mail version.
This means they’re better for the environment and cost less to produce.
How do we work out your service charge?
Your service charge is based on 2 main types of cost - contract costs and responsive costs.
Contract costs are easier to calculate as they’re for maintenance and services we can plan for in advance, and we’re locked in on price.
Responsive costs are a little trickier to calculate as these are largely to do with the specific issues that arise at the developments or estates where our customers live, and are therefore more variable.
While some maintenance costs are unavoidable, there’s a lot you can do to keep these costs low. A great example of this is bulk waste removal.
Our total spend on bulk waste removal has gone up by 25% compared to last year, due to increased amounts of fly-tipping and improper bin use.
These are costs you could avoid if you and your neighbours dispose of rubbish correctly.