6th September 2022
Sanctuary Scotland
The cost-of-living crisis
By Craig Moule, Group Chief Executive of Sanctuary
As a not-for-profit housing association, we exist to deliver our social purpose – providing housing and care to people across England and Scotland.
We’re deeply concerned about how the cost-of-living crisis is affecting our residents – some of whom are elderly, vulnerable and living on low incomes, they will be the least able to absorb the impact of rising costs.
At Sanctuary we are committed to playing our part in solving the challenges facing our communities. At an average of £108 a week, our rents are low and more affordable than the private rented sector. That said, we already know that many of our customers are already struggling during this period of high inflation particularly in relation to food and fuel affordability. That is why our teams are working closely with community groups and other charities to ensure residents can access additional help.
Therefore, we welcome the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ consultation on social housing rent and support the proposal to limit rent increases for the poorest in society.
At the same time, we recognise that there are competing priorities, whilst wanting to limit the impact of soaring inflation on our customers we also need to improve the quality of our existing homes and continue to deliver much needed new affordable housing. To do this we need not only to sustain levels of investment but in many cases increase it. Our rents facilitate the necessary investment and require a degree of protection and certainty to allow for long-term planning.
Simply put, the UK needs greener, more energy-efficient homes as well as a greater supply of new affordable homes. In the absence of adequate rental growth, we will need the government to provide additional funding to support improvements to the homes we provide and enable the provision of additional new homes.
