As part of our bid to increase the supply of social housing in the borough, we applied to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) for permission to build new homes starting in 2011. As part of this bid, the RSH gave permission for us to increase rents to an ‘affordable rent’ which is currently calculated as 80% of the market rent for a similar property in the same area.
From September 2011 to March 2015 we set affordable rents whenever a 2,3 or 4 bed house became empty. We continued to convert properties to affordable rent, restarting in January 2016 and ending in March 2018. Annual changes to affordable rents are currently covered 5 year rent agreement with the Government which caps increases at CPI+1%.