Council housing rent increases

About rent increases

As a social housing landlord, we follow the rules set by the government when we calculate any changes to your rent.

Read the government's policy on rent standard 2026.

Your rent will increase on 6 April 2026. You will receive a letter from us telling you about changes in your rent.

If you pay a service charge along with your weekly rent, your charge may also rise to cover the costs of providing these services to your building or estate.  

Your rent variation letter includes any service charges for the year ahead, with a detailed breakdown of the charges for each service we provide. 

Service charges

Service charges pay for services such as cleaning your block or lift maintenance. Some homes also have other charges that change to reflect actual costs. For example, if you live in a property where heating or water charges are included, the cost will be based on use and may go up or down. 

Read our annual report to find out about rents and service charges.

There are some service charges that cannot be covered by Housing Benefit or Universal Credit. These are known as ineligible service charges. 

If your Housing Benefit or Universal Credit gets paid directly to your rent account, remember that any ineligible service charges still need to be paid by you. 

If you receive Universal Credit (UC)

Make sure you inform Universal Credit of any changes to your rent or housing costs on 6 April 2026 and not before. 

You must do this on the date that your rent changes. Do not report it before this date. If you have an online UC account, they will give you a task in your To Do list to ‘Confirm Your Housing Costs’.

You need to confirm:

• the date of the change
• that your rent is still charged weekly
• any weekly eligible charges

If you do not report the changes to your housing costs to Universal Credit on the day they change, you may lose out on some benefit.  

If you are late reporting your annual rent change, you can write in your Universal Credit journal and ask that they do an ‘Anytime Revision’ to cover the rent from the date it changed.  

If they agree to this, they may send you some backdated housing costs, which you should pay to your rent account if you haven’t done so already. 

If you do not have a UC online account, you can contact Universal Credit to report a change in your housing costs.

If you receive Housing Benefit

Your Housing Benefit will automatically adjust to take into account the new rent amount, so you do not need to do anything. The Housing Benefit Team will write to you to tell you how much Housing Benefit you’ll get. If your Housing Benefit doesn’t cover your full weekly rent, you’ll need to make payments for any shortfall.

How to pay your rent

If you pay by Direct Debit, it will be automatically adjusted to your new rent amount.  

We'll write to you at least 5 days before your Direct Debit changes to let you know how much will be taken from your bank account. If you have any rent arrears, your Direct Debit will be adjusted to recover these. 

If you pay by Standing Order, you will need to amend it to the new rent amount. You can do this by logging on to your banking app, logging in to your online banking account, phoning your bank or visiting a branch. 

Go to our other ways to pay your housing rent pages for a full list of ways you can pay. 

Get help to pay your council housing rent

If you're struggling to pay your council housing rent, find out how to get advice and support.

Contact us if you have rent arrears 

Your Tenancy Agreement requires you to pay rent weekly or in advance if you pay other than weekly.

If you have rent arrears, you need to make an arrangement to pay them back to safeguard your tenancy. We’re here to help you, so contact The Housing Income Management Team to discuss this.

If you already have an arrangement in place to repay your rent arrears, you need to make sure you increase the payments by the amount your rent and service charges have increased.