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Rent & Affordability

In summary

Housing associations are committed to setting rents and services charges that are affordable for tenants. They do detailed work each year to understand affordability for their tenants, including gathering data and speaking directly with tenants. They also need to understand the costs set out in their business plans, which include managing, maintaining and improving existing homes and services, as well as developing much needed new homes.

Housing association boards work with senior staff to interrogate the evidence available and determine how rents will reduce, freeze or rise across all the homes they own for the financial year ahead.

Housing associations set their rent levels each year in the context of Welsh Government’s policy for social housing rents. This policy states that affordability must be considered and evidenced when setting rents each year, and housing associations are required to demonstrate to Welsh Government and the social housing regulator how they have done this.

Working with our members, we have produced a number of resources to support housing associations in Wales to understand affordability for tenants and to take decisions on rent and service charge levels, including:

You can read more about how housing associations set affordable rents here.

Our priorities:

  • To support housing associations with tools and resources to help ensure that their rents and service charges are affordable for tenants.

  • To work with Welsh Government to ensure that the sector has a long-term and sustainable rent settlement.

How we develop this area of work:

Our Chief Executive, Chairs and Vice-Chairs and Finance member communities play a key role in informing our work in this area.

We also work closely with Welsh Government officials and partner organisations including the Welsh Local Government Association and TPAS Cymru.

For more information on how we develop policy, click here.

Full summary
Rhea Stevens

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Rhea Stevens
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