Purpose

Elm Court is a
sheltered housing scheme run by SCDC Housing Department. The scheme
is unique within our stock as it is the only scheme where residents
(a mix of tenants and shared equity leaseholders, but all older
people) receive heating and hot water through a centralised heating
system.
 
A more efficient
heating system has been installed and is close to being
commissioned. The new heating system will give residents the
ability to control their own consumption of heating and hot water
and will allow to be issued to individual residents.
 
Until recently the
residents have benefited from a long-term low-cost energy tariff
which has now ended. This gave a price of 1.689 pence per KWH. The
new variable tariff has increased to 29.3 pence per KWH. This meant
that from April 2023 there was a significant increase in the
service charge applied for each resident.
 
To support residents
through the difficult period a previous executive decision notice
was agreed to cap the service charge at £30 per week from the
1st April to 30th
June 2023.
 
We have received
confirmation from the Government that our application for the
energy discount scheme has been approved, which means we will
receive a discounted rate for the supply of energy to Elm Court.
This will be applied and backdated to 1 April 2023.
 
To date we don’t
know what the new rate will be, so we are unable to calculated and
revise heating service charges and set up the new individual heat
energy billing process. We hope that will be in place within the
next few weeks.
 
We are therefore
seeking approval to extend the original executive director to cap
the service charge at £30 for all residents at Elm Court (19
Flats) until 31st August 2023.
 

Content

To cap heating charges
at Elm Court to £30 per week. This will only apply from the
start of the 2023/4 financial year until the new heating system is
operational.