Your Rent for 2024/2025
How rent levels are being set for 2024/2025
MDH follows rules set by government when calculating any changes to your rent each year. Since 2001, rents for properties let on ‘social rent’ have been based on a formula set by Government. This creates a ‘formula rent’ for each property, which is calculated based on the relative value of the property, relative local income levels, and the size of the property. Annual rent changes were limited and landlords were expected to move from the actual rent of the property to the formula rent. From April 2016, the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 required social landlords to reduce their rent by 1% each year for the four years between April 2016 and March 2020.
In October 2017, the Government announced its intention to set a long term rent deal for local authority landlords and housing associations. This would permit annual rent increases on social rent of up to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus 1 percentage point from 2020, for a period of five years.
However, as the CPI was much higher than anticipated in 2022 the Government capped the increase for existing social tenants in 2023/24 to 7%. For 2024/25, the Council agreed to increase social rent for each property by 7.7%.
What does this mean for tenants?
This means rent will increase by 7.7% for tenants of MDH. All tenants will receive a rent increase letter at the end of February 2024 which will explain your new rent amount which will be charged from the 1st April 2024 and will be collected over 52 weeks, this means there is a rent free week on the 31st March 2025. The actual average social rent charged by the Council will be £96.81 per week (over 52 weeks).
Frequently Asked Questions
If you are in receipt of Universal Credit you will need to report this rent change to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This needs to be done on, or soon after, 1 April 2024, via the online DWP Portal. You will need to select the “UC Account Home Page” and choose the “Report a change of circumstances” option, then within that option you will need to select the “Where you live and what it costs” option. You are responsible for ensuring that you are being paid correctly for your housing costs.
If you are in receipt of Housing Benefit, your provisional entitlement will be shown on the front of the rent letter sent to all tenants at the end of February. Housing Benefit notification letters will be sent out with the Council Tax bills on 14 March 2024. Please wait for this notification before making any queries.
We are committed to helping tenants who are facing financial difficulties. If you are struggling, please get in touch with your Income Neighbourhood Officer, we are here to help and will work with you to reach a solution. We work with multiple agencies in order to help including CHAT, Navigate, Citizens Advice, Age UK and National Debt Line. You can email your Income Neighbourhood Officer on htenancy@middevon.gov.uk or call 01884 255255.
We also have a dedicated financial support page on our website Residents' Financial Support - MIDDEVON.GOV.UK where you can find out how to apply for the Discretionary Housing Payment, the Household Support Fund (closes 31st March 2024), what help with food and energy costs are available and lots more.
We offer a variety of different ways to pay your rent and charges. These include:
- Via your online portal My Mid Devon my.middevon.gov.uk
- Weekly, fortnightly or monthly by direct debit.
- Over the phone with a Neighbourhood Officer (call 01884 255255)
- Via automated telephone payment 24 hour service (01884 233000)
- At your nearest Post Office
- At any PayZone
Your rent helps pay for the services we provide you, from responsive repairs, planned maintenance to helping and supporting you to manage your tenancy etc. The yearly increase in rent ensures that MDH can continue to deliver and improve services. All of our services have been impacted by the inflation increase but we will continue to increase our investments in repairs, maintenance and improving homes. We need to ensure that our expenditure does not exceed our income and therefore we budget carefully to ensure that our service remains financially robust and viable.
Every 12 months we provide an annual report which includes details of the spending and performance for that year. Please see our annual reports for more details on our yearly spending.
We understand the need to deliver value for money whilst at the same time delivering more responsive and more relevant services. For example, we know that many tenants want to live in a clean and tidy area. The costs of grounds maintenance, communal electricity and communal cleaning are all rising but we need to prioritise these areas of work in order to help people to take pride in where they live.
If you have any ideas as to what we could do to deliver greater value for money, we would like to hear from you. Any idea, big or small, can be considered; for example, would you like to see more online meetings with tenants? This would keep our travelling costs down whilst also ensuring that you had an opportunity to talk to us about matters of importance to you.
We use feedback from tenants to help us to improve our service, we also want to make our money go further and this is why we are looking for small changes which can make a big different. If you have an idea you would like to discuss please contact our Tenant Involvement Team on 01884 255255, email tenantinvolvement@middevon.gov.uk or email the contact form on the right hand side.
You can also use our ideas board on Let's Talk Mid Devon: Rent Changes for 2024/2025 | Let's Talk Mid Devon