Published: Thursday, 28th January, 2010 9:00am

Rent rise approved by councillors

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COUNCIL tenants can expect an increase of 2.39% in their rents this year.

This means an average weekly rent increase of £2.12 for the roughly 30% of tenants who pay their own rent - the rest are on housing benefit.

Reading borough housing leader, Cllr Debbie Edwards, said: "Nobody is having an easy time at the moment, so it was important to us to keep the rent increase as low as possible.

"But our tenants also want the council to stay as their landlord, so we needed to get enough money in to support the business plan that allows us to do that, to get our homes up to Decent Homes Standard by the end of 2010-11, and to provide strong and improving services to tenants."

The percentage increase has been calculated to offer the best value for Reading Borough Council, thanks to the complicated formulas used by the Government when working out its own grant funding and how much of the rent money it keeps. This system is due to be changed from next year so councils keep all their own rents, rather than paying them into a national pool which is then redistributed.

Cllr Edwards said: "Hopefully this is the last year of the national system in which money gets transferred from Reading to other councils.

"We need to revise our business plan to take account of that, but it can only be good news for Reading tenants in terms of future rent increases."

The Reading Federation of Tenants and Residents' Associations backed the increases, which was approved unanimously at a meeting of the full borough council on Tuesday last week.

Lib Dem housing spokeswoman Cllr Daisy Benson said it was with "a heavy heart" that she backed any rent increase, especially because of the impact on tenants who do not get housing benefit.

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