Rents up and cuts to repairs

Council house tenants in Oswestry are today facing a double whammy of bad news - higher than inflation rent increases and cuts in repairs and services.The government is recommending an average rent increase of 7.6 per cent - a rise from £58.46 to £62.91.

Oswestry Borough Councillors will be told of the proposed increases at Thursday's cabinet meeting.

They will also learn of proposed reductions in the service given to tenants.

They include:

• A review of the provision of a warden service and reduced landscape maintenance for group dwellings.
• Reducing internal decoration and day-to-day repairs on individual properties.
• Painting the outside of houses could be cut to one every six years.
• A garden service offered to vulnerable tenants reduced to one cut a year.

It comes after hundreds of council house tenants last year voted overwhelmingly against seeing their homes transferred from Oswestry Borough Council to a housing association.

At the time council bosses warned that the council had a massive black hole in its housing finances.

Members of the cabinet will debate the council's budget strategy for the coming year, with a warning that it has been impossible to limit the impact on services provided to tenants.

They are being recommended to accept the reductions as part of the 2008/09 budget strategy to recommend to full council for its February meeting.

Mark Taylor, council finance director, says in a report: "Detailed work has been undertaken to develop a housing revenue account budget."