PSL rate setting management overview
Pivotal to a Private Sector Leasing (PSL) scheme is the drive to support families and individuals find suitable accommodation, particularly in circumstances where there is an urgent housing need, say, through a relationship breakdown. Under these schemes, housing organisations take on privately owned properties - typically with one, two or three bedrooms - and let them out to social tenants, often with incentives for those landlords willing to work in partnership to meet the increasing demand for affordable housing. For those private landlords with properties to spare, such schemes provide the opportunity to lease their rental house without the need to use a letting agent, the surety of a guaranteed rent amount over a longer term, plus the added bonus of a reduction in revenue losses during any vacant period. Whilst schemes vary in detail, they provide the reassurance of leased properties being professionally managed and maintained by the housing organisation, with the landlord only usually responsible for external and structural repairs, as well as the standard buildings insurance.
PSL rates represent those values remunerated to the landlord at an agreed frequency for leasing out their property, which are confirmed in advance using a rudimentary formula and then paid at the start of each operating period. Based on the agreement between the housing organisation and the private landlord, the full rate could be levied, irrespective of whether the property is void for any part of the lease period, or could be stepped down at a reduced rate after, say, the first 4 weeks, 8 weeks, etc. of any void period. This is controlled through the configuration of complementary payment rules, applied in sequence to each asset-specific rate. Therefore, as one rule comes to an end, the next one will be automatically triggered, and so on, until such time as the final 'ongoing' rule is activated, transcending the remainder of the lease term. Each PSL agreement is fulfilled using an effective rate - the consolidated lease fee, made up of discrete elemental components - and the supporting rules which deliver the desired payment scaling; hence both are inextricably linked and cannot operate one without the other. Once initiated, these payment rules can be adjusted over the lifetime of the agreement, either by percentage value or by revising the duration parameters, and will take effect for all subsequent fees i.e. any changes will not be applied retrospectively.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of PSL rate setting management, including: