At the Council meeting this evening, Lead Councillor for Housing Deborah Edwards proposed that the increase in Council house rents this year should be kept to just 2.39%, in fact bringing them to the same level they would have been at for the last year had the Government not stepped in with a special grant to help tenants in the economic recession.
The Council this time last year agreed a 4.9% increase, but was able to halve it to 2.45% when the extra Government help was announced.
Cllr. Edwards says: "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.
"Hopefully," she adds, "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.
"I think this decision shows," she concludes, "that we are a Council that listens to our tenants and a Council that cares for our tenants, and I am proud of that."
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