Rent Increase 2027/28 Consultation

A sustainable approach to setting the Housing budget

The Housing Service and Finance team work together each year to set the housing budget. Every area of spending is reviewed to make sure we can continue to provide good-quality homes and services now and in the future.

We recognise that many tenants are facing increased household costs. When developing the budget, we aim to balance keeping rents as affordable as possible with the need to:

• Maintain and improve existing council homes.
• Meet important safety and legal requirements.
• Invest in tenants' homes and neighbourhoods.
• Continue providing housing services that tenants rely on.
• Help address the shortage of affordable housing across Clackmannanshire.

Financial challenges

The Housing Service faces a number of financial pressures that affect how much we can invest in homes and services, including:

• Increasing costs for contractors who carry out repairs, maintenance and improvement works.
• Rising costs for materials, energy and staff pay.
• Uncertainty around the future costs of meeting the Scottish Government's Social Housing Net Zero Standard, which aims to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions from council homes.
• Additional investment that may be identified through our Stock Condition Survey, which assesses the condition of council homes and helps us plan future improvements.
• Funding our long-term investment programme while keeping rents affordable.
• Maintaining financial reserves to deal with unexpected costs while reducing the need for borrowing.

Investing in Council homes

We plan to invest £68 million over the next five years in council housing. This will support:

• Improvements to existing council homes.
• Essential health, safety and compliance work.
• Energy efficiency improvements to help reduce carbon emissions and improve the comfort of homes.
• Planned maintenance programmes, including replacing components such as kitchens, bathrooms, windows, roofs and heating systems when they reach the end of their life.
• Delivery of affordable housing through the Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP).
• Improvement works identified through our ongoing Stock Condition Survey programme.

Our priority

One of our key priorities is to maximise the amount of investment we can fund directly from rental income. This helps reduce the need to borrow money, which in turn reduces future interest costs and allows more money to be invested in homes and services for tenants.

Balancing investment and affordability

The challenge for the Housing Service is to strike the right balance between investing in existing homes, delivering housing services, meeting future investment needs and keeping rents as affordable as possible.

By carefully managing the Housing Revenue Account, we aim to protect services, invest in tenants' homes and ensure the housing service remains financially sustainable for the future.

Your views and feedback are extremely important to us, and we would strongly encourage everyone to take part and have their say. We would be delighted if you could fill in our Rent Increase Consultation 2027/28, which will only take 5 minutes to fill in.