Introduction

All tenants who benefit from the provision of communal facilities or services are charged their share of the cost of maintaining the facilities or running the services.

Service charges form part of your tenancy agreement and are payable weekly together with your rent. In the past, these services have been included in your rent, but we are now required to show and charge them separately to ensure that:

• you can easily see what you are being charged for
• tenants pay for the services provided for their benefit and the cost of services is not effectively paid for by rents received from other tenants.

They were introduced by Soha as follows:

Sheltered tenants	from  April 2003	click here   for more info ...
Other tenants with communal facilities  (e.g. living in flats)	from April 2006	click here  for more info ...

To find out more about specific issues connected with service charges in Sheltered Schemes or service charges for other tenants, including explanations of service charge items, please click on the links above.

When are service charges increased?

Service charges are recalculated from the beginning of October each year. As Soha can only charge you the costs of providing the services, they will only be increased if costs of providing the services increase. If the cost of providing the services drops then the service charge will go down.

How service charges work

Service charges are designed to ensure that each property is charged for its share of actual costs incurred.

However, in order to collect charges in the year in which they are incurred, Soha have to estimate the costs and charge tenants their share of estimated costs.

At the end of the year, any over or underpayments are added to the estimate for the next year.

Example Block A consists of 10 flats. Soha estimate the costs for Block A will be £3,000 for 2006/07. From the beginning of October 2006, the service charge for each tenant will be: £300 per year = £6.25 per week Actual costs for Block A  turn out to be £2,840 for 2006/07 and Soha estimate the costs will be £3,100 for 2007/08. From the beginning of October 2007, the service charge for each tenant will be:                     estimate for 2007/08             = £310  per year less:           difference for 2006/07           =  (£16) per year                                                 which totals    £294 per year    =   £6.12 per week