Consultation A - Spreading the rent collection weeks for tenants
*This consultation closed on the 31st December 2022. The formal decision on the outcome of the consultation was made by the Cabinet at Full Council meeting on the 22nd February 2023. The outcome of the consultation is that from the 2023-2024 rents year, we will spread rent collection over 52 weeks. For more details, please refer to 2023-2023 Rent and Service Charge Policy.
All social housing landlords calculate rents and service charges on an annual basis and then collect it as a weekly ‘gross rent’ amount. It has long been the practice in Milton Keynes that we have not been charging tenants rent during the two weeks over the Christmas and New Year period. This is not policy or part of your tenancy agreement. Annually, you still pay the same amount, but your gross rent is divided by 50 weeks rather than 52 weeks, making your weekly amount slightly higher.
For example, if you pay £4,966 annually in gross rent, your weekly charge is spread over 50 weeks and is £99.32. If there were no ‘rent free weeks’ and it was spread over 52 weeks, it would be £95.50 each week.
We are proposing to remove the two‐week rent‐free period and collect the annual rent over 52 weeks from April 2023. We think this is a small way to reduce the amount you pay weekly, which may be useful as the costs of living rise. It will also streamline some of our admin processes, such as submitting returns to the government, which will save us time and costs.
Your observations and our replies
We will be adding in this section new information on this consultation, and we will be updating your observations and our replies in the document below.