Douglas Borough Council is to recommend to the Department of Infrastructure that there be no increase in social housing rents for the 2016-2017 financial year.

The move follows the council’s response to the department after it sought local authorities’ views on proposed rent increases for public sector housing and gave notice that the introduction of means-tested rents would be deferred until a cross-governmental means-testing policy had been identified.

Housing committee chairman Councillor David Ashford said: ‘Over the past five years there has been an accumulative rise in social housing rents amounting to some 42 per cent. That, combined with changes in the benefit systems which has led to some payments not covering the full amount of rent, has resulted in some tenants experiencing genuine financial hardship.

‘The council has long been a proponent of means-tested rents in order that the most vulnerable are protected and those who can afford more pay more of a market rate. Regrettably the Department of Infrastructure’s current stance does not support the council’s view, so at present we have no mechanism for off-setting the very real financial problems caused by steep rent rises some of our tenants are facing. What’s more, those problems are compounded by changes to the points system and to the criteria for benefit eligibility.

‘Were the department to apply a further, say five per cent, rent increase for 2016-2017 many of our tenants either on fixed incomes or affected by the benefit changes would find it even harder to manage than they already are.

‘Means-tested rents would be the solution, but as the department has yet to introduce such a policy, the council is recommending that there be no rent rise for the coming financial year. Many tenants are already struggling to balance their household budgets and the council believes no caring society today should count among its community public sector housing tenants faced with the agonising decision: “heat or eat?”’

Council leader Councillor David Christian said: ‘As the island’s largest housing authority, with a streamlined and experienced housing service, the council has long maintained it is sufficiently well resourced to manage its own housing stock and ultimately to set its own rent levels. But that day has yet to come and so the council, sensitive to the financial pressures being placed on some of its tenants in the absence of a rents means-testing policy, is seeking to work in partnership with the department to reach an equitable outcome. The council is therefore firmly of the opinion that the solution, if only in the short term, is that rents be frozen at their current level for the coming financial year.’

Photo - Housing committee chairman Councillor David Ashford. Picture Andrew Barton.