Housing Budgets Survey

Overview

Camden makes decisions each year about how much rent to charge tenants, and how much we will ask tenants to pay in service charges. Tenants pay rent and service charges together, but they are set separately and fund separate elements of the services Camden provides.

Rent and these service charges are all eligible for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit. Around 70% of tenants receive full or partial Housing Benefit which would also, either fully or partially, cover any increases to rent or these service charges.

(*) Power is the cost of gas and electricity for the heating pool, metered heating and leaseholders heating and electricity costs, billed via heating scales, leaseholder charges and metered charges to tenants. There are also some other service charges such as for sheltered and hostel residents.

There are also a range of fees and charges within Housing which residents will pay if they use them e.g. garages, parking spaces, sheds, allotments, keys and fob replacements. A decision on changes to these fees is also taken at Cabinet. It is recommended that many of these increase by CPI inflation of 3.5%, including tenant garages (e.g. A tenant garage charged £20/week in 2026/27 would be increasing by 70p).

The Council faces a challenging financial context in both its Housing Revenue Account (HRA) and General Fund. The Council estimates that in the General Fund, it will need to have achieved £85m- £90m of savings by the end of our next three year Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) in 2029/30, with £65m of savings required in 2027/28.

HRAs across the country have been struggling to set balanced budgets for a number of years. Much of this is due to a range of expenditure pressures, including spikes in inflation and interest rates, the increased demand from repairs which comes with a large, aging portfolio and a more robust regulatory regime following the tragedies of the Grenfell Tower fire and the death of Awaab Ishak.

Equally, over the last decade the government has imposed a number of restrictions on the ability of HRAs to raise income through rents (including four consecutive years of rent reductions from 2016/17-2019/20). This prevented HRAs from being able to respond to rising costs and reduced their financial resilience.  The government has launched a new 10 year rent settlement and reintroduced rent convergence (see the section on rent increases below for more details) which is a crucial tool in helping councils respond to some of these pressures and restore their resilience.

Whilst the rent settlement and convergence are very important, they will take many years to fully materialise and undo the impacts of historic government decisions. This means that the HRA has a budget gap to close. Over the three year period of the next MTFS from 2027/28-2029/30, the Council will need to make £8m-£12m of savings within the Housing Revenue Account, to ensure that income from rents and service charges is sufficient to cover the costs of delivering our landlord functions.  This assumes that the Council will increase rents by the maximum allowable amount each year and seek full cost recovery on its charges for services as far as possible.

This survey will ask you what you think about the proposed rent increase and how it would affect your household, what services are important to you and what services could be reduced, and how you think the council could save more money. Your answers will help inform the decisions made by Cabinet when setting 2027/28 HRA budgets and will influence the shape of our services and how much we charge tenants over the medium term.

Proposed rent increase

The council is proposing to increase rent in line with the maximum allowable under the government determined Rent Standard. This is the rate of CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation of 3.5% plus 1%, plus up to an additional £1 per week for properties paying less than formula rent (formula rent is effectively a calculation of social rent based on property valuation, local earnings levels and bedroom size, and is subject to the rent caps). This is what the increase would mean for average homes which are subject to rent convergence:

• Rent for an average 1 bedroom home would go up by £7.12 per week
• Rent for an average 2 bedroom home would go up by £7.94 per week
• Rent for an average 3 bedroom home would go up by £8.74 per week

Service charges

It is important that the service charges cover the full cost of delivering those services. The cost of delivering services has been going up, and there is no other source of money to help pay for them.

If we want to keep offering the same level of services then we have to increase service charges to cover the increased cost. For 2027/28, a tenant receiving all of the services listed in the box above would pay £1.29/week extra. However, over the medium term there is also the option to keep service charges lower by reducing the level of service provided.

We want to hear from you about what services you value most, which services you want to keep as they are, and any you think should be cut back. Sharing your priorities with us will help Camden understand how best to provide the services you really need, and how to keep your service charges as low as possible over the medium term whilst ensuring that we can fully cover the costs of delivering them.

We invite all residents to share their views with us in this survey. Not all the information or questions apply to Leaseholders or Freeholders, who pay separate charges. We value everyone’s opinion though, so we want to hear what you think, especially about the service charge questions (question numbers 5-11). Please also use the free text questions to share your suggestions along with any comments specific to your experience as a leaseholder or freeholder.