A meeting of Wokingham Council’s Executive - Individual Member Decisions will be asked to approve the council's draft response to a government consultation on the rent setting policy for social housing. The report pack for the meeting also contains the results of an equality impact assessment that was carried out on the council's draft response to the consultation.

Social housing rent policy

The meeting will include a report asking the council to approve its draft response to a government consultation on the future of social housing rent policy. The government is consulting on proposals to continue the existing policy, which allows councils to increase rents by CPI +1% each year, for a further five or ten years. The report says that Wokingham Borough Council currently owns and manages around 2,600 homes. The physical and financial performance of these assets underpins the viability of the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) mainly funded through rents, it says. The quality of our assets and how they perform also directly impacts on our customers and the communities that they are part of. Good quality and well-maintained homes can significantly impact upon the health, wellbeing and quality of life of our residents. The report recommends that the council responds to the consultation by supporting the proposal for a five or ten year continuation of the CPI +1% policy. This proposal strikes a good balance between affordability to tenants and being able to maintain existing homes and potentially invest into new homes, it says. We support the longer-term certainty around rent policy as this will help with longer term financial planning. The report acknowledges that while the policy gives the council the ability to limit rent increases, it says that doing so would limit the HRA's ability to invest in new homes. Rent increases are only one element of the financial planning, areas such as interest rates, decarbonisation, greater landlord responsibility, etc are also important elements that are impacting on the ability to invest in new housing, it says. It also asks the government to consider what other measures it could introduce to help councils invest in new homes. Continuation of the PWLB[^2] discount rate or an introduction to a longer term rate that is below current market value however closer to the governments longer term inflation rate (i.e. 2%-3% interest rates), it suggests. Additional government grants (e.g. Homes England) to support new housing acquisitions and development and grants to support stock improvements including decarbonisation. Allowing HRAs to retain RTB[^3] receipts will support capital investment.