Your rent and service charges 2026-2027
Within the next two weeks, you will receive a letter from us that confirms changes to your rent and/or service charges that will apply from April. As soon as it’s available, you can also access your rent and service charges notice here in my.account.
Share this article
For rental customers there will be a rent increase of 4.8% and for shared owners, your rent will be increased in line with your lease. Your letter will give you an exact figure. We explain how your rent is set below.
We use rental income to help run bpha, from providing services to maintaining existing homes and building new ones – always focusing on giving you value for money. You can find more information on how bpha spends each £1 of income here.
How is rent set
The government has introduced a new social housing rent policy that set a formula that will be used for ten years from April 2026 to calculate rent.
The CPI in September 2025 was 3.8%. This was much higher than the CPI rate of 1.7% in September 2024, due to rising costs, particularly energy. This has resulted in a larger rental increase than last year. The cost of repairs has increased during 2025 – plus, we have had a 23% increase in the number of repairs over the last year making the overall costs even higher. This has led to the decision to increase rent in line with the rent regulatory limit.
Shared ownership rents are set in line with your lease agreement. For most customers, this is also set using a set formula: the Retail Price Index (RPI) from the previous September (4.5%) plus 0.5%. RPI is similar to CPI but also includes housing-related costs – and again, it was much higher than last year (2.7%).
Service charges
A service charge is a payment towards the cost of providing and maintaining communal areas and services, where applicable. The amount charged is the total cost of providing the service, divided by the number of people who receive the service. If you pay service charges, these are set separately and will be confirmed in your letter.
We have made a few changes to how some services are listed in your notice. To help ensure the charges are clear, we have split out ‘bulky waste’ from ‘communal cleaning and ‘caretaking’, so it will now appear as a separate line.
Bulky waste covers large items that are not appropriate for household bins, plus household rubbish that has been illegally or inappropriately disposed of. Bulky waste charges are based on the number of annual collections for your block/scheme.
We have seen an increase in fly-tipping incidents – the cost of clearing these falls to bpha and is passed to customers through service charges. We hope that giving customers a clearer understanding of these costs will raise awareness and help to reduce fly-tipping within our local communities.
Grounds maintenance
We started a new grounds maintenance contract with Just Ask Estate Services (JAES) in April 2023. In the months that followed, the service fell behind for reasons including recruitment issues. We agreed a plan of action with JAES to bring the service back on schedule. This worked for some time, however, we know from your feedback and our monitoring of the service that some issues returned. We put an improvement plan in place, which included additional staffing, to help make sure work is done on schedule and we’re working closely with JAES to monitor this. To fully understand customers’ current experience of the service, in January we surveyed 8,000 customers – we are currently reviewing the responses and will be taking action based on what you have said. We’ll update you in the next edition of Talk. If you didn’t have the opportunity to take part in the survey but would like to share your views, please email customervoice@bpha.org.uk.
If you receive the grounds maintenance service, you will see on your rent and service charges notice that the cost of the service has increased. We understand that an increase in cost while we’re working to improve the service may be disappointing. The cost includes the increase in National Insurance and rise in the National Living Wage that were introduced last year. You are paying for the cost of the service only – you are not paying any costs associated with the improvement plan.
Money Advice
We understand that any increase in costs might be worrying. Our Money Advice Team provides free and impartial help to anyone looking to improve their financial situation. You can find out more here.