Rent & Service Charges
Information on your rent and service charges as a shared owner and what they cover.
Can you increase my rent?
L&G Affordable Homes as a Registered Provider of affordable housing are regulated by Government, and we can only increase rent in line with guidelines set by Government.
Your lease will detail when to expect your annual rent review. You will receive notice in advance and the new rents typically go live from 1st April each year.
Looking to pay your rent?
Visit My Brolly or contact your management provider.
Service Charges
Social or London Affordable Rent
As a social or London affordable rent customer, you pay a monthly service charge along with your net rent. The term ‘service charge’ is a collective term and covers your estate charge and your service charge.
The elements you pay towards will depend on the type of property you are living in. If you are living in a house, your service charge will be for services delivered to the wider neighbourhood, such as looking after play areas and cutting grass in areas of public open space. If you live in an apartment, your service charge will also include costs specific to your buildings such as cleaning the corridors and windows, and maintaining a lift or a video or audio door entry system (if your building has these services).
The legislation that covers the charging, collection and reconciliation of service charges can be complicated. This information aims to explain what communication you should expect to receive in a normal service charge year, and what each communication means.
Your service charge is calculated to ensure that L&G recovers the costs we pay to contractors and other third parties delivering services to your neighbourhood, building and home.
You’ll only be charged for services that you benefit from, although some of these services delivered to the wider neighbourhood may not be immediately visible to you. For example, we will recharge costs for maintaining play areas. This area may not be visible to you from your home, and you may not use the area, but we charge everyone living in the neighbourhood for these services.
If you live in a house, you will not pay charges for services that are only benefitting people living in apartment blocks such as lift maintenance.
We don’t make any profit from service charges, and if we charge you too much or too little in a year, we have to tell you about this and tell you how we’ll put it right.
In February each year, you’ll receive a letter from your management provider that tells you what your new net rent and service charges for the following financial year will be. The letter will also tell you about any other charges you pay, such as parking charges or costs for heating and hot water (if these apply to you). The new charges are payable by you each month. The new charges normally apply from 1stApril each year, but the date for you will be confirmed in your letter.
The service charge in this communication is an estimated charge and represents what we think the cost of delivering services to your home, building (where relevant) and wider neighbourhood will be for the coming year. While we always aim to use known information, such as contracts or bills, to ensure that the estimates are as accurate as possible. This can be difficult on new build estates as some of the services may not have started.
We write to you in February as it is a requirement of your tenancy agreement that we give a month’s notice of a change in charges.
As the charges you pay each month are estimated, between April and September each year we look at the actual costs (based on invoices from suppliers and employee costs) for the year and compare these to the estimated costs you have been charged. This is called the ‘reconciliation’ or ‘balancing figures’.
The outcome of this comparison will be an additional amount to pay by you (a deficit) or an amount that you are owed (a surplus).
The balancing figure for you will then be added to or deducted from the new estimates you will pay the following year. For example, we would complete the reconciliation for the financial year 1st April 2024 to 31st March 2025 by September 2025. The resulting deficit or surplus will be added to or deducted from the new estimates you’ll paid from 1st April 2026.
The legislation that is relevant for service charges is the Landlord & Tenant Act 1985, specifically sections 18 to 30. You can view the Act here: Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
The legislation details that there are some services which we cannot recharge to a social or London affordable rented customer. The costs we cannot recharge are anything structural (repairs to the roof or gutters for example), any professional fees (such as audit costs) or any costs relating to the maintenance of a shared heating system (only relevant in tower block schemes with communal or district heating systems).
Affordable, Intermediate or London Living Rent
As an affordable, intermediate or London living rent customer, you do not pay a separate service charge. You pay one single rent amount each month which includes the costs to us of delivering services to your neighbourhood, building and home. You still benefit from the services, but your rent payment covers the costs.
In February each year, you will receive a letter from your management provider telling you what your new rent will be from 1st April. You may pay additional charges for utility costs, and these will be included on that letter.
Questions about your service charges?
If you have any additional queries about your service charges or the communications you receive, please speak to your Management Provider in the first instance, or raise a query through My Brolly.