15th January 2016

Dear Tenant

Rent consultation 2016/17 – proposed 2% increase

The Association is now in the process of setting our budget for 2016/17 and in doing thiswe consider some of the costs and expenditure we anticipate for the coming year. This determines what the rent for the coming year needs to be to cover our costs. These items of major expenditure are shown in the table below. We also take into account inflation trends, comparable rents with other providers of social rented housing and our tenant’s ability to afford our rents. While CPI and RPI inflation remains low, some of our costs increase above inflation for example building insurances and contractors costs. We are therefore considering a longer term inflation rate to keep all of our costs in line with any increases. Please also remember that we are continuing to re-structure our rents to make them fairer – some rents will go up and some will fall as part of this process. This is called rent harmonisation and is part of a longer term plan – this will be Year 2.

  • Your views are important – our last Tenant Satisfaction Surveycompleted last December 2013 indicated the following:51% of tenants thought our rent represents good value for money
  • 66% of tenants receive full or part housing benefit
  • 55% of tenants find it fairly easy to afford our rent
  • 62% of tenants spend more than 10% of their income on paying fuel bills

Our Performance Report issued in October 2015 is based on the results of the Scottish Social HousingCharter and we have performed well on many of the key areas including – overall satisfaction of Barrhead HA as your landlord, keeping tenants informed, satisfaction with our repairs service, as well as meeting Scottish Housing Quality Standard, repair appointments kept, time to complete emergency and non-emergency repairs, rent loss on empty properties, and overall rent arrears. However, you told us that we could be doing more to encourage tenants to participate in our activities. We discussed this last issue with our Tenant Scrutiny Panel and they believe that opportunities are available for those who wish to participate – do you agree?

We are required to consult with our tenants and stakeholders over the rent review, and the enclosed questionnaire forms part of that process. We would like to hear your views on these important matters. If you want to get involved at an earlier stage through our Tenant Scrutiny Panel Meetings, we would also be happy to hear from you. Our next Tenant Scrutiny Panel Meeting is planned for Tuesday26 January 2016, at 5.30 pm in our office. During 2016, we will celebrate our 30th anniversary – what would you like us to do to mark this milestone? Let us know.

We have again decided to provide you with detailed information to help explain the decisions behind the rent review and what added value we provide tenants. We hope that you will find this useful. The enclosed questionnaire will help allow us take your views into account when the final budget and rent setting decisions are taken by our Governing Board at the end of February 2016.

The table below shows what our main costs are likely to be and what major changes in service are to be provided next year. We have based this on a proposed 2%increase in rental income. We are continuing to review our service charges.In addition to continuing to improve our services during 2016 we will complete 15 new build flats at Rankin Court, the site of the old East Renfrewshire Council Social Work office at Darnley Road in Barrhead. We will continue to look for opportunities to build more new homes.

Here are some of our key draft assumptionsbeing considered: these will be finalised in February 2016

Repairs and voids budget / £376,000
Repairs - we carried out 2808 repairs in 2014/15to our propertiesPlanned investment - we spent £1m overall in your homes for 2014/15 / An average of 3.13 repairs per property.
Investing £320.00 per property.
Cyclical budget for gas safety checks and maintenance, gutter cleaning, painter-work and testing for asbestos, legionella and roof anchors. / £250,000
The planned draft maintenance budget – is still to be finalised as we inspect and review what work is required / £644,800
We will continue to provide a full-time Welfare Rights’ and part-time Energy Advice Services and will expand services if our funding bid to the Big Lottery is successful / Welfare Rights Service 5 days aweek and 3 days a week for Energy Adviser.
Comparability with other rent providers.
Our rents are lower than the private sector in this area. / The Councilwill be consulting on a 4.9% rent increase, and are undertaking three years at this level. Other “local providers”are considering approximately0.7% to 2%.
The average private sector rent for a one bedroom flat is £350 pounds; our average rent is £294.

We would ask you to complete the enclosed questionnaire and return it by Friday 5thFebruary 2016. You can either complete the enclosed and return it to our office or complete the questionnaire using the link on our website returning it via e-mail to f are available at the office should you wish to discuss this review.

We appreciate your comments and look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Shirley A. Robison

Chief Executive

Barrhead Housing Association Limited