Living in Your Home
Here you will find the infomation you need about being a tenant and the services we provide. It tells you what you can expect from us as a landlord and also tells you what we expect from you as a tenant.
For more information on living in your home please contact your designated Housing Officer in the first instance.
Rent & Service Charge Restructure
What you are charged to live in your home is made up of 2 elements – The rent, which pays for the maintenance of your home, new kitchens and bathrooms, cyclical painting and our housing management, property and corporate staff teams. Service charges for services that are specific to your individual property or development such as landscaping, cleaning and specialist equipment such as automatic doors or hoists. The rent you pay for your home is based on a points system primarily taking into account the size and type of accommodation, known as rent attributes. The purpose of the restructure is to create a fair, consistent and transparent system for charging rent for the homes we provide. Service charges have historically been worked out at great detail on a local basis with the cost of cleaning or landscaping being different from development to development. This approach is cumbersome to administer and the differentials between service charges need to be reviewed to ensure they were sufficiently and fairly spread.
We inherited a rent structure following the transfer of engagement of the Abbeyfield Scotland properties into Blackwood in September 2022. New build properties have have also been calculated differently. In addition to this, we have several flat types such as flat own door, flat off corridor and flat shared entry, which are charged different rent levels. To make this more fair, and standardised across the board, for all blackwood tenants, we are undertaking a rent review.
Please take the time to review and respond to the following questions or emailing cst@blackwoodgroup.org.uk with your response, using the subject 'rent and service charge review', and in the body of your email write the corresponding question number and either ‘agree’ or ‘disagree.