Rent Consultation 2024-25

River Clyde Homes is looking for your views on the service and investment impact that potential rent increases would have from April 2024. 

This year has presented a number of continued financial challenges for the Association as well as you, our tenants. The same factors that impact on you as individuals, such as increased costs, high inflation and higher interest rates, impact on RCH’s budget and what RCH can do. Inflation and interest rate increases mean it costs more to carry out repairs, maintenance and investment works as materials, labour and contractor costs increase. These costs have increased at a higher rate than CPI.

How will we set your rent for next year?

One of the key considerations when proposing any increase to rents, is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). CPI is commonly used in the housing sector and is the measure used to increase welfare benefits. We have historically proposed rent increases relative to the preceding October CPI rate. The CPI rate for the year released in October 2023 was 6.7%.

We have identified rent options and established the impact that these would have on our services and investment.

We will now be carrying out inititial focus groups as a precursor to our full rent consultation.

What should you do next?

As part of our consultation, we will hold several focus group sessions across Inverclyde. We are keen to gain your views on rent options, affordability, value for money and the impact they will have to the services we provide.

Everyone attending one of these sessions will be entered into a prize draw for a £25 voucher!

The details of the sessions are as follows: 

FOCUS GROUP SESSIONS

You can read about our 2022/23 performance in our published Annual Report. The report shows how every penny of rent money is spent. We feel it is important that you understand the impact rising costs are having on our budgets and what we can do too. Inflation and interest rate increases mean it costs more to carry out repairs, maintenance and investment works as materials, labour and contractor costs increase, more to pay for interest on loans and more for running costs such as our electricity and fuel. These cost pressures have a significant impact on our business planning and rent setting process for 2024/25. 

We hope customers will let us know what they think of the options by attending one of our focus group sessions.

If you are worried about paying your rent, please get in touch with us straight away, so we can talk about how we can help. You can contact our Customer Experience Team on 0800 013 2196.