Exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis, tenants and leaseholders are increasingly challenging service charges and requesting greater transparency. This workshop will assist you by identifying what costs can be recovered from tenants and leaseholders, along with practical guidance on how you can pass costs onto customers.
With many draws on your organisation’s income, it is also now more important than ever to get on top of service charge setting. Many local authorities and registered providers spend huge sums on providing services, but few recover full costs from their tenants and leaseholders. This workshop will also assist you in maximising your income, whilst considering service charge affordability for customers.
What will I learn?
- Why managing service charges effectively is important
- What can and cannot be charged for in a service charge
- Understand the difference between fixed and variable service charges
- Understand good practice in calculating service charges for both tenants (including supported housing tenants) and leaseholders
- How getting the terms of leases and tenancy agreements right is essential to full recovery of service costs
- Understand the legislation and case law that governs what service costs can be recovered and how costs can be recouped
- How service charges may be challenged by tenants and leaseholders and the role of the independent Housing Ombudsman in this
- Understand future changes in legislation that will have an impact on how we manage service charges.
Who should attend?
- Housing directors, managers and officers
- Finance managers and officers
- Service charge managers and officers
- Home ownership managers and officers
- Asset managers
- Estate Services managers and officers.
Benefits of attending
- Improve how you manage service charges, including considering how you can improve how you communicate charges to customers
- Ensure your service meets legislative and regulatory requirements
- Plan what actions you need to put in place to maximise service charge income for your organisation.
Helen Muir
Helen Muir specialises in leasehold and service charge management and has been working in this field for nearly 30 years. She held senior roles for two large housing groups before becoming an independent consultant and trainer. Over the last 14 years Helen has provided interim management and strategic and operational support to a variety of local authorities and registered providers to assist them in improving service charge and leasehold management policy, practice and cost recovery.
How to book
Individuals
You can book your place in a few simple steps:
- Select ‘Pay now’ to start your booking
- Sign in or create a My CIH account (see instructions below)
- Have your payment details ready:
- Credit or debit card if paying yourself
- If your organisation is paying, have a purchase order number ready
- Complete the online form and submit your booking.
To pay, you’ll need a My CIH account.
- New to My CIH? Visit My CIH page and click Sign up now to follow the steps. You can also follow our step-by-step guide
- Already have an account? Just sign in with your email and password as usual.
Having trouble logging in or creating your account? Read our guide or contact our customer services team:
Multiple delegate bookings
We welcome organisations who want to work with the CIH Housing Academy to provide training to their workforce. If you'd like to know more about possible discounts for multiple bookings of training courses or qualifications please contact us on 024 7685 1700 or email partnerships@cih.org.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about our training courses or want to speak with a member of our team, we’re here to help. We can guide you through the next steps and provide any additional information you need.
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