Rent and service charges 2024 for Shared Owners

Your service charge pays for the services provided to your block, for example: grounds maintenance, cleaning, lifts and communal repairs.  You will also pay a yearly building insurance premium. 

As you pay your service charge in advance, we estimate how much it will cost to provide services to your block for the year ahead. The year runs from April through to March. We will send you your Estimated Service Charge for the year ahead by the end of February each year. 

On reviewing the costs for the services, we provide we look at both known and unknown costs to calculate what we anticipate our spend to be. Known costs include services where there is an existing contract in place, such as cleaning and grounds maintenance. With these contracts we know in advance exactly how much it is going to cost us each year to provide these services to residents and we will apply these contractual uplifts.

Unknown costs are for services, like repairs and utility bills and costs from a third-party managing agent, where we are don’t know in advance precisely how much these will cost for the coming year. Where this is the case, we look at several factors, including the previous three years’ expenditure, and charge accordingly. 

We aim to inform you of your actual service charge costs within six months of the year end, by September 2024.  Your actual service charge statement will detail the actual costs of managing and running your building. A credit or debit adjustment will be shown on your statement to tell you whether we have over or under anticipated our charges from when you received your estimated service charge at the beginning of the year.

As part of your service charge, you will contribute towards the sinking fund.  This money is used to pay for any planned major or cyclical works to your building. For example, window renewal or communal decoration works. If the works costs more than is in the sinking fund, we will ask you to pay your share of any balance. 

No. There are some service charges costs paid by homeowners that are not included in the service charges paid by tenants. The tenant’s share of these costs is paid by bpha from the rental income we receive. 

As examples, tenants do not pay for building insurance, repairs to the structure/exterior of the building, or for cyclical decorations. As stated above, their share of these costs is covered by their rent. 

For any given service charge item, you are only required to pay for your share.  

As per the terms of your lease as a homeowner you are responsible for any repairs to your property as well as any communal repairs to your block and or estate. 

Government policy and legislation is changing to address fire safety concerns in some types of housing and to start to prepare the housing stock for a future without fossil fuel burning heating systems and where net carbon neutral is the norm.  The cost of managing housing assets is therefore increasing as we change our services and standards to address the new guidance. In June 2021 we appointed a Building Safety Manager to manage our highest risk buildings and further develop our plans to enable our assets to be carbon neutral by 2050.

This is the cost charged by the external Management Company for the services they manage and maintain on the estate. 

Even though you may own your property as per the terms of your transfer document you are still responsible to contribute towards the upkeep of the communal areas that bpha maintain, this will usually be a contribution towards grounds maintenance.