Almost 3,000 Brighton and Hove council tenants owe rent

A quarter of all council tenants in Brighton and Hove, or almost 3,000 people, are in arrears with their rent, owing £839,000 between them.

The highest number – nearly 45 per cent of the total – owe up to £99 with about 40 per cent owing between £100 and £499.

Ododo Dafe, head of customer access and business improvement at Brighton and Hove City Council, said that a small number of tenants owed more than £2,000.

She told the council’s Housing Management Consultative Committee that the outstanding debt had risen 31 per cent from the end of March to the middle of this month.

Last year she said that the council’s Housing Income Management Team had collected £47.6 million in rents due – or more than 98 per cent of the total.

The sum outstanding was £644,000 – or 1.34 per cent of the total.

She said that a team of seven officers contacted tenants as soon as they fell behind with their rent.

While the council served notice of seeking possession, to protect its interests, it had a Court Team of five officers working with tenants to try to avoid evictions.

She added that the council has 815 tenants affected by the under-occupancy charge – which its opponents have called the bedroom tax. It came into force in April.

Of those 594 were in arrears with their rent with 342 having fallen behind since the welfare reform took effect.

The 594 tenants between them owe £138,000 – or 16 per cent of the total rent arrears – and 101 of them have been served with a notice of seeking possession. Most of those – 79 of them – have been served with a notice of seeking possession since April.

In May the council’s Housing Committee voted to protect tenants affected by the welform reforms as far as possible. The protection is targeted at tenants whose arrears are solely due to the under-occupancy penalty.