The government is taking a huge slice of the rent paid by local council tenants in order to subsidise other local authorities, Norman Baker today reveals. Lewes District Council has to return a whopping £3million of the rent collected from council tenants every year to the government, he has established. Lewes District Council needs to spend £6million a year to maintain their properties. Being forced to return half this sum to the government leaves a large shortfall.
Commenting on the news, Norman Baker says: "It is an outrage that hard pressed council tenants in my constituency are being fleeced to prop up inefficient local councils elsewhere in the country. I am sure that council tenants would agree that money from the rent collected should be retained locally and reinvested to maintain council stock. There are approximately 3,500 council tenants in the Lewes District and they deserve well maintained accommodation. This Dick Turpin government is actively hampering that.
"The council set local rent based on a government formula and should be allowed to reinvest locally the monies that they collect.
"I have written to Hazel Blears MP, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to protest about this and to request an explanation for the pick-pocketing of our local council and its tenants."
The Lead Councillor for Housing at Lewes District Council, Steve Saunders, added: "Lewes District Council has managed over recent years to pay this subsidy out of council house rent collected and still maintained and improved its homes to a high level. However, for this year and the next two years we have had to make a £600,000 reduction in our planned maintenance needed to maintain our council homes. After three years the situation is predicted to get even worse.
"Approximately £18 out of every £69 average week collected is taken by government to subsidise councils often in other areas with even more problems. This subsidy system which is negative to Lewes District Council does nothing to reward our council and its tenants who have managed to maintain their homes for a high standard for many years. Why should the poorest in one area subsidise the poorest in other areas. It seems a very strange and highly unfair system."
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BN7 2LJ.
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