Housing chief Councillor Meric Apak

A GROUP of council tenants has urged Camden not to raise their rents during the coronavirus pandemic. warning that people were already suffering enough without higher bills.

The Town Hall is ordering a 1.5 per cent rise in rent and the same again on service charges, insisting that strained budgets mean that the money is needed to stave off cuts to services or redundancies.

But tenants leaders warned that rental cash which could have helped cover the gap has been lost by the council’s slow response to getting hundreds of voids – properties that have become empty – filled.

Tenants also said they believed housing department costs had gone up because it was taking on work that would previously been paid for by the social services budget.

Rent rises only received support from two of the five district management committees – the consultative bodies across Camden which are supposed to help tenants have a say on policy.

Fran Heron, from the Camden Town District Management Committee, told a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday that residents understood the pressure on the council’s finances but said: “In the midst of a pandemic, which is taking its toll on families with job losses leaving them with insufficient income, or in some cases no income, with physical and mental ill-health rates escalating, this is not the right time to increase rents and aggravate an already grave situation by adding more financial burdens to the most vulnerable households.”

Fran Heron: ‘Vulnerable poor people cannot be expected to subsidise other poor people’

On the view that housing rents may have started to be used to finance social services gaps, she added that nobody disagreed with the need for support but that “vulnerable poor people cannot be expected to subsidise other poor people.”

David Auger, a chartered accountant who was part of the tenant deputa­tion to the council, estimated that £2.5million could be missing due to rents not collected from voids, which would negate the need for a rent and service charge rise – although council officers said they did not recognise his figures.

Conservative councillor Steve Adams said the scale of empty properties was “beyond unfortunate”, adding: “It’s been going on for too long, and it needs to be controlled. Camden has apparently 792 empty council homes, which is the third most of England ­– and 169 of these been vacant for more than six months.”

He added that he believed there needed to be some “external oversight” to look into the delays, but Labour councillors shot the down the idea of bringing in consultants.

Former housing chief Councillor Julian Fulbrook said: “They cost a huge amount of money. They take a vast amounts of time. Some of the chumocracy consultancy in the NHS would give anyone a moment of pause for having a consultant come in and tell you what your basic core business is about.”

There is some concern among the ruling Labour group, however, that the move to raise the rents runs against the bodies set up to make tenants part of the process.

“It makes me feel uncomfortable,” said Councillor Leo Cassarani. “We’ve given them a democratic opportunity but then we’re not following their recommendations.”

Camden’s Housing Scrutiny Committee meeting, at which rent rises were discussed this week

Housing finance director Peter Sebastian said: “We should note that all of the increases are eligible under housing benefit and Universal Credit. “We know that that doesn’t apply to all tenants and for those there’s very strong council support available; for those who come into financial difficulty through our housing and our welfare teams.” The council estimates that 70 per cent of tenants will not see the rising cost because it will covered by this benefit support. Camden said it had a new programme set up to deal with voids faster, although the lettings process had been more difficult due to Covid restrictions.

Housing management director Mary McGowan said the department was not plugging social services’ budgets, but said: “We all know that to be rehoused in our properties these days, you have to be vulnerable. Increasingly, the people who are rehoused in social housing these days have increasing needs.”

Labour’s housing chief Councillor Meric Apak said: “I don’t want to go back to tenants in the next three months, discussing what services are we going to cut? The repair service? Are we going to make caretakers redundant? Is this really the discussion we want to have with our residents?”

He said that while around 30 per cent of tenants not covered by benefit support would be affected by rent rises, 100 per cent of residents would be hit by service cuts if the bills were untouched.