7% rent hike confirmed for council house tenants
A local authority has made the decision to increase council housing rent by 7% as their budget continues to be squeezed by high inflation rates.
Wandsworth Council Labour Leader, Simon Hogg, has said the rent increase will help the authority meet costs while funding better services for tenants, repairs, and new estate managers.
Approved at a Cabinet meeting last week, council housing rents will be increased from 3rd April for the 2023/24 financial year. At the meeting 34 councillors voted for the increase and 21 voted against.
A report from the South London council states the rent increase will result in an average increase of £8.03 per week, excluding service charges.
In an attempt to reassure people, Cllr Hogg said the increase is below inflation, the rise in benefits and increases facing private renters. According to data from the Office of National Statistics, inflation rose by 9.2% in the 12 months to December 2022, down from 9.3% in November.
Additionally, the UK government have confirmed benefits, including working age benefits and the State Pension, will rise in line with inflation from April 2023, ensuring they increase by over 10%.
Calling the decision a ‘huge challenge’, Cllr Hogg said: ‘The below-inflation rise will enable the council to meet its costs as well as our ambitious plans where we’re going to improve and expand our high-quality and responsive service for tenants, we’re going to support investment in more estate managers…and of course it helps to facilitate the delivery of much-needed new housing.’
In 2016, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was awarded a £4.82bn grant by the government to build over 100,000 affordable homes by 2021, though this was extended to 2023 due to the pandemic. A further 35,000 homes are expected to be delivered between 2021 and 2026.
Another reason for increasing council housing rent prices is to help the local authority ‘tackle homelessness’.
‘We are going to tackle homelessness; we’ve put a huge investment into that team. We’re giving secure, lifelong tenancies to our renters but we’re also setting up landlord licensing to drive up standards in that sector, to drive out the worst rogue landlords’. Cllr Hogg added: ‘All of this is possible because we’re managing the council’s finances prudently.’
However, Conservative Cllr, Kim Caddy, has slammed the decision. She said: ‘The council, at a time when cost-of-living pressure are at their most extreme for many years, has increased council rents by an eye-watering 7% and no doubt we could argue for hours about the state of the housing system at large, and the root cause of the financial challenges we’re all facing.
‘But…there’s a decision that has to be made and Labour have the choice over whether to leave money in the pockets of residents to help them through this cost-of-living crisis or jack up rents that residents can ill-afford and they choose the latter.’
Photo by Alex Tai