How we spend your rent
The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) is a separate budget within a local authority's overall finances, dedicated to managing housing and property services. Rent and other housing-related income must only be used for those services – it cannot be used to fund other council services, and vice versa.
In 2025-26, we collected approximately £82m in income, £74m of this came from rent from tenants. Our overall rent collection rate was 99.36%.
We continue to invest in tenants’ homes and meeting our Regulatory Requirements. Spending has increased on upgrading homes to meet new standards brought in under the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023. We also now face more rigorous inspection regimes and must maintain detailed records. We have increased administrative and staffing costs to improve our records and support our tenants.
Collection with care
Our Income team takes a ‘collection with care’ approach to rent arrears management, spending time to engage with tenants and identifying any support that may be required.
The team dealt with 33,654 telephone calls (made and received), 5,706 visits to tenants’ homes and handled over 17,000 emails with tenants in relation to their rent account during 2025-26.
We received this feedback from one of the tenants we have supported:
“I rang up on behalf of a friend who suffers from mental health, he was getting help with his rent from Universal Credit but didn’t know which way to turn. I rang your department and spoke to a lady who went above and beyond to help me and my friend. She never rushed us, she was brilliant at explaining everything bit by bit. She never fobbed us off, just took time out to explain.”