Where we work and what it costs
Two questions, and neither answer has a number in it yet.
Where do you work, and what does it cost. They are the first two things anyone asks, and this is the page that promises them — so it had better say plainly what we know and what we do not, rather than fill the gap with something shaped like an answer.
Bluebell Housing has published no rent, no service charge, no support charge and no area list, because none has been set and no property is held. A figure invented to fill a page does not stay a placeholder: it gets quoted back by somebody already living in one of our homes, and it gets used by a benefits service deciding a claim.
What we can do instead is explain how the money works in supported housing generally — which is a real answer, and in some ways a more useful one. The rent and the support are usually paid for through two different routes, by two different parts of the system, and knowing that is what lets you ask a provider the questions that actually move the number.
No rent here, and no area. What is here is how the money works.
Where we work
No areas are published here, because Bluebell holds no property yet. Naming one now would be naming a place we would like to be asked about rather than a place where there is a home.
So ask us about your own address. You will get a straight answer for it rather than a map that flatters the coverage, and if the answer is no it will be a no, with whoever we would point you to instead.
There is no office address on this site either, and that gap is the more serious of the two: a registered name, a company number, the part of the UK the company is registered in and a registered office are a Companies Act duty. All four are still to be confirmed, and our terms page lists them as gaps rather than quietly leaving the rows out. Terms and conditions.
- The areas where we actually hold property and can reach it, rather than the ones we would like to be asked about.
- Named at the level you would use yourself — where you live, not a region on a procurement map.
- Per service, because leasing a property and supporting somebody in one do not cover the same ground.
- With the licensing position for that area stated alongside it, because HMO and selective licensing are decided council by council and a property that is fine in one place needs a licence in the next.
How rent and support are funded
Two bills, two routes, and they almost never come from the same place. The rent is charged to the person living there under their own agreement, and it is normally met by a housing benefit claim in their name rather than bought by a council as part of a package. The support is funded separately — commissioned by a local authority, paid for by a charity or a grant, or in some cases not funded at all. Where accommodation falls within the rules for specified accommodation, the housing costs are met by housing benefit administered by the council rather than through the housing element of Universal Credit, and rent restriction is applied differently. Whether any particular scheme falls inside those rules depends on the legal form of the organisation providing it and on the council’s decision on each claim: no provider is approved or accredited in advance, and any provider telling you otherwise is describing something that does not exist.
Supported housing
No figure appears here, and none appears on our locations and rents page either, because none has been set. What follows is how supported housing is funded in general — the mechanism, not a claim about us — so you can put the right questions to us and to anyone else you are speaking to. The long version, with the regulations quoted, is in how supported housing is paid for. If the model itself is new to you, start with what supported housing actually is.
TBD — how a Bluebell rent would be met is not stated anywhere on this site. Bluebell’s corporate form — whether it is a for-profit company, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation — and then, scheme by scheme, the housing benefit basis each local authority has actually accepted, evidenced by a written decision. Both are needed before any statement about how a Bluebell rent is met can be published, and the first decides whether the exempt accommodation route is open to the company at all.
How supported housing is normally funded- Rent and any eligible service charge are due under your agreement. Help with them comes through housing benefit, which the council administers, or through the housing costs element of Universal Credit — and which of the two depends on the accommodation rather than on you.
- Specified accommodation is the category that decides that. Where accommodation falls inside it, help with rent is met by housing benefit even for someone otherwise on Universal Credit, and it is also left out of the benefit cap and the social sector size rules. The definition sits in the Housing Benefit and Universal Credit (Supported Accommodation) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
- Exempt accommodation is the narrower category inside that, defined in Schedule 3 to the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Consequential Provisions) Regulations 2006. It has a provider test before it has anything else: the landlord must be a non-metropolitan county council, a housing association, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation, and a housing association for this purpose is a body that does not trade for profit.
- It also has a support test: that body, or someone acting for it, must provide care, support or supervision that is more than minimal and is connected to the accommodation. Support that floats free of the housing does not qualify.
- Where both tests are met, the rent is assessed under the older housing benefit rules rather than capped by the local housing allowance. It is not a discount and not a blank cheque — the council still has to be satisfied the rent is reasonable, line by line.
- No provider is “approved” or “registered” for any of this. The entitlement belongs to the resident, and the local authority decides each claim on its own facts. Anyone telling you they hold an exempt accommodation status is describing something that does not exist.
- The support is funded separately — by a local authority, through a commissioned contract, or by you. It does not come out of the rent, and a provider who cannot say which pot pays for what has not thought about it.
- TBD — how a Bluebell rent would be met is not stated anywhere on this site. The company’s own corporate form has not been confirmed to this project, and that is what decides whether the exempt accommodation route is open to it at all; after that it is a question for each council, scheme by scheme, on a written decision. Nothing about funding is published here until both of those exist.
Property management
What we are responsible for repairing, and what happens when damp or mould is reported, is set out in our repairs, damp and mould policy — including the response times, which go in there the day operations confirms them and not before. If you are trying to work out what is on your wall and what to do about it, damp, mould and condensation takes it apart in plain words.How repairs and management are normally paid for- A resident is never billed for reporting a repair, and never billed for a repair that is the landlord’s to do. Deliberate damage is the one exception, and it has to be evidenced rather than assumed.
- Statutory safety work — the gas check, the electrical report, the alarms — is not a budget line that can wait. It is a legal duty on the landlord and it happens whether or not the property is making money that month.
- For a landlord, management is either a percentage of the rent collected or it is built into a lease and there is no separate fee at all. Which applies depends on the agreement, and the two are not comparable on price alone.
- TBD — Bluebell has not confirmed its management terms, and no fee, percentage or schedule of recharges appears on this site until it has.
- Anyone quoting a management fee before seeing the property, its certificates and its condition is guessing. Including us.
Property partnerships
What follows is how a lease of this kind is normally structured, so you can interrogate our proposal — and anyone else’s — with the right questions. The longer version, including the parts of this arrangement landlords most often find out about late, is in leasing to a supported housing provider.
None of it is advice, and this page is not an investment offer. A lease binds you for years, its obligations outlive whoever signed it, and what you actually keep depends on your mortgage, your tax position and your own circumstances — none of which is knowable from here. Take your own legal and tax advice before you sign anything, and do not rely on a website, ours included, for either.
How a lease with Bluebell is normally structured- A fixed rent for a fixed term, paid monthly, whether or not the property is occupied. The figure is set per property, against its condition, its size and its location, and it is never published.
- Rent is not yield. What you actually keep depends on your mortgage, your tax position and what the lease leaves you liable for — and none of those is knowable from a web page. Anyone publishing a guaranteed return is describing an investment, which this is not.
- There is normally no management fee on top, because Bluebell is your tenant rather than your agent. You are not paying anyone a percentage; you are accepting a rent set at a level that reflects who is carrying the voids and the management.
- Expect the rent to sit below what an open-market letting might achieve in a good year. That is the trade for occupancy risk and management moving off you, and a proposal that claims both is a proposal to read twice.
- TBD — no term, break clause, rent review, fitting-out period or repairing split is published on this site. Those come from Bluebell and its solicitor, in heads of terms, per property.
Specialist accommodation is still in development, so there is nothing here about how it would be paid for. That page says what has to be true before it becomes a service — a property, a licence where one is needed, and a date.
What to ask any provider, including us
- Ask for the rent and the support as two separate figures, in writing. One combined number hides which of the two is going up, and the two are funded through completely different routes.
- Ask what is inside the rent and what is a service charge. Then ask which parts of that service charge are eligible to be met by housing benefit and which are not, because the ineligible parts are the ones that come out of somebody’s own money every week.
- Ask whether the scheme is being claimed as specified accommodation, and whether the council has actually decided a claim on it yet. “We are applying for it” and “the council has agreed it” are very different answers, and only one of them is a fact. How supported housing is paid for explains what the council is actually deciding.
- Ask what happens if the housing benefit claim is refused or reduced — who carries that, and whether the person can stay while it is appealed.
- Ask what somebody would pay if they started work. The interaction between earnings and a supported housing rent is the single biggest thing that stops people taking a job, and a provider who has not thought about it has not thought about the resident.
- Ask what is charged when somebody is away — in hospital, in custody, or staying somewhere else — and for how long a place is held.
- Ask whether the support can end without the housing ending, and what the notice is on each. If the answer is that they end together, it is not two agreements — what supported housing actually is is written around that distinction.
- Ask for the agreement itself before anybody is asked to sign it, and ask for it in a form the person can actually read. A rent somebody has had explained to them once, at the door, on the day they move in, has not been explained.
- Ask anyone who quotes a figure before reading the referral how they arrived at it. Including us.
What we will publish, and when
- An area list, once we hold property and can genuinely reach it. Not before, and not as a radius drawn around an office.
- The funding basis for each scheme, once the organisation’s own position is settled and a council has decided a claim on it. Named per scheme, because it is decided per scheme.
- What the rent covers, what the service charge covers, and which parts of the service charge are eligible to be met by housing benefit. That breakdown matters more than the total, and it is the part providers most often leave out.
- The licensing position for each area we work in, once it applies. A licence is never claimed before it is issued.
- Not a “from” figure. A “from” is the cheapest version of a thing almost nobody actually gets, and it is the number most likely to be wrong for you.
Ask us about your own address
One question, one address, one straight answer. The routes below are the ones already published on the contact page rather than a new address invented for this one, and each carries its own reply window.
- Ask about a home for someone close to you
- One working day
- Local authority placement
- Five working days