Advice hub

Hi. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to talk a little bit about the changes to our customers' rents that take place in April and to find out a bit more about how and why that happens. Darren is part of the customer services team at Aster Group here and is answering some of our questions from our customers today. So how do we calculate the rent changes and why is it linked to something called the consumer price index? Rent increases for social and affordable housing providers like Aster are set by the government. So the government uses a formula that tells housing associations like us how much we can raise our rents by on a yearly basis and the measure that the government uses is called CPI the Consumer Prices Index. The consumer prices index is a government assessment of the price of things in a typical shopping basket. So it's tracking inflation. It's tracking how much more things cost And CPI in September of the previous year is the point at which the government sets the benchmark for the increase in rents for the following year. And the formula they use is CPI plus one percent. And that's to deal with a number of things but it's also to recognise that the costs associated with delivering our core services, housing management, repairs and maintenance, just in the same way that the cost of that typical basket of goods has increased, that measure is used to acknowledge that the cost of delivering our core services to customers has increased too. Why does the rent need to change for providers like Aster Group? As with all organizations and businesses, we're operating in an economic environment where the things that I've just talked about around the inflation, the increase of costs of things means that we have to keep pace with the cost of managing, maintaining our homes, delivering services, the cost of things like materials and other things that we use in the maintenance of our properties, how much it costs us to build new homes, for example. So just like costs that everybody's facing in terms of increased food costs, we're exposed to those cost increases too, which is why it costs us more each year to do the things we always do. And it's important to point out as well that the CPI measure is used. There are other things that we've seen significant inflation on, so the inflation around the cost of raw materials like wood, bricks, concrete and components that we put into our homes when we're making repairs or doing replacements some of those have increased between nineteen percent and twenty three percent in the last couple of financial years. So the idea of the increase is that we're able to keep pace with all of the things that we absolutely must do to keep our customers happy and safe in their homes and keep their homes in good order. You mentioned lots of things before, but what is that rent spent on typically? So where can customers see it going? All of the money that we receive at Aster from customers paying their rent and other charges is reinvested in services to manage and maintain our communities and our customers' homes. It's used to invest in our planned maintenance programmes, so things like the replacement of people's kitchens, bathrooms, roofs and other major works like windows. But also it's used for responsive repairs, so fixing things that go wrong at any point that our customers report it to us. And as well as that, the money we receive from customers' rent is also reinvested in the building and development of new social and affordable homes. So on average, Aster builds anywhere between nine hundred and one thousand new social and affordable homes, so that we're doing our bit to make sure that we increase the supply of affordable housing for those people that are in most need of it. And lots of customers and we've all probably heard about the cost of living and that increasing. So what would your words of advice be to customers if they're worried about paying their rent? It's a really important point, Julia. So for those customers that are struggling with costs, who are struggling to pay their rent and other charges, the first thing they really should do is reach out to us. We have a dedicated financial well-being team who can offer support and advice to those customers, and we would really encourage customers to reach out for that advice and support. So please do contact us. You can reach us on o three thirty three four hundred eight two two. Customers can visit their My Aster account, or they can reach out to us via the live chat service. I recognise that for some customers they might be difficult conversations to have but it's really important that we know how you're getting on if you are struggling. For other customers, they might want to make use of our money advice tool which is a really helpful system that allows them to check that they're receiving all of the benefits that they're entitled to and make sure that they're maximising their household income. And that's a really good thing to do for anybody, whether or not they are struggling with their finances or not. Thank you very much Darren for chatting us through that and we hope that was really helpful.