Some of you may live in a building where you have to pay a service charge. This is the money paid for the cost of services and repairs to shared parts of that building.
Your service charge can cover things like:
• Cleaning, lighting and maintenance of shared areas like stairwells and hallways
• Lift and door entry systems in blocks of flats
• Making sure your fire equipment is safe (including regular checks and repairs, meeting the new requirements and legislation).
There are many factors which are causing service charges to increase. These include the cost of services rising due to a range of factors, such as Brexit and the pandemic. There are also building safety costs to comply with the Building Safety Act 2022, which are designed to prevent a repeat of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
Although many of these service charge cost increases are out of our immediate control, we’ll continue to do everything we can to protect residents from some of the pressures we’re facing. This includes bringing services in-house to Southern Housing where possible, so we don’t have to pay VAT on the cost of labour and there are no contractor costs.