Families face massive rise in rent bills

May 27 2009 by Andrew Newport, Paisley Daily Express

THOUSANDS of council tenants across Renfrewshire face a whopping 25 per cent rise in their rent bills.

Yesterday, the decision to hike up rents from their current level of £55.45 a week to £71.85 by April 2015 was slammed as “disgraceful”.

But Renfrewshire Council chiefs insist the increase is necessary if the Paisley area’s crumbling housing stock is to be brought up to standard.

The new rent charges have been approved after the local authority announced a separate four per cent rise earlier this year.

Angry Paisley North MSP Wendy Alexander said the council’s ruling SNP/Lib Dem administration should “hang their heads in shame”.

The Labour politician added: “These rises in rent are simply disgraceful. Council tenants will be clobbered with a 25 per cent increase over the next five years.

“The SNP/Lib Dem-led administration has already raised rents by four per cent in April, even when inflation is currently negative.

“Worse still, tenants facing rent hikes this year will also face cuts in investment programmes. This year, cuts are being made to the kitchen and bathroom replacement programme, asbestos removal, roof replacement and even electrical rewiring of homes.

“The SNP-led council boasts of a new financial package. They should instead hang their heads in shame that over 95 per cent of this package – £143million – is coming straight out of the pockets of local tenants and council tax payers.

“The SNP government has provided no money until 2011/12, when they could be out of office, and this paltry £1.5million per year will all go on paying debt on already demolished houses.

“Not a single penny of the extra £100million brought forward this year and last year by the SNP government in Edinburgh for housing is going to Renfrewshire.

“Families already under pressure will be hit badly. These new rent increases mean tough times ahead for tenants in Renfrewshire.

“I urge all tenants to write to the councillors who voted for these plans to complain.”

However, Councillor Brian Lawson, Renfrewshire’s housing spokesperson, has hit back at Ms Alexander.

The SNP man said: “Wendy Alexander is distorting the facts of this unprecedented investment in council housing.

“She ignores her own party’s lamentably bad record, both locally and nationally, on council housing and is the very last person who can lecture the SNP administration on financial matters.

“Only a short time ago, she had to resign from office as a direct result of her inability to manage a few thousand pounds of election donations.

“I will take no lessons in basic arithmetic from her. Now that she has no role in the Scottish Parliament, she spends her time trying to talk down Renfrewshire.”

Councillor Lawson also insists the rent rise will finally bring Renfrewshire’s council houses into the 21st Century.

“We have put together a £149million plan to solve the problems which Labour created,” he said. Our tenants remember how the previous Labour administration tried to blackmail them into an unsuccessful stock transfer.

“Under the previous Labour administration, tenants faced a 23 per cent rent increase over five years – including a nine per cent increase in one year – with nothing like the level of investment in their homes they can now look forward to.

“A disgraceful 96 per cent of Renfrewshire Council houses are below the acceptable standard.

“This year, we have fitted a slightly lower number of kitchens and bathrooms but the overall budget has increased because we have tripled the number of new central heating systems as a direct result of requests from our tenants.

“Wendy Alexander is attempting to stop this investment in council housing. This would leave many of our 13,000 tenants in misery and fuel poverty with inefficient heating systems, without modern kitchens and bathrooms and with obsolete electrical wiring in their homes.

“Strangely enough, at the council meeting, the Labour group had no alterative plans to put forward.

“The SNP are not prepared to see our tenants suffer any longer from the effects of decades of Labour neglect.”