LOCAL GOVERNMENT (RENT AND RATES) (SCOTLAND) (Hansard, 11 March 1970)

§ Mr. Esmond Wright (Glasgow, Pollok)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to oblige local authorities in Scotland to give separate figures for rents and rates in the forms requesting payment sent to individual local authority tenants. My proposed Bill is quite straightforward and modest. It might be described as non-political in character and educational in intent. It is designed to ensure that all tenants of local authority houses in Scotland should be clearly informed of the amounts due from them in rent and in rates, and that there should rest on a local authority there a clear obligation so to inform their tenants.

Local authority tenants are apt to present forms to their collectors without making any distinction between rent and rates. They speak of and often think of the total payment as "rent". They are apt to regard the division between rent and rates as a somewhat academic exercise and are simply interested in the total amounts which they have to pay each week or month.

Local authorities do not help, since they do not make plain the difference between the two. Few Scottish local authorities issue separate rates notices to their council tenants, even for information only. The position is further complicated by the fact that a rent book usually runs from May of one year to May of the next and, when a new book is issued, the rates for the following year have not been agreed and can only be provisional. Because of that, authorities have been apt to omit them, but to send out later in the year a rates notice or a circular letter offering to furnish details of the annual rates payable, with a breakdown of the total sum payable by way of rates.

Authorities find that very few tenants ask for this information. In general, being human, they concentrate on the total amounts that they have to pay each month. They know in a general way that it includes the rates, but the significance of the rateable burden is frequently not appreciated.

1351 At present, there is no statutory form of rent collection in Scotland, and no uniformly acceptable system of recording payments. The great majority of Scottish local authorities used what is known as the Gilbert system. That is a form produced by Alfred Gilbert and Sons. A carbonised collection sheet is used by the collector, and the entry on it matches the entry on the tenant's corresponding card.

The same or a similar practice is followed by the Scottish Special Housing Association. Even where the rateable value is shown somewhere on the card, very often in rather small print, it is hardly ever shown in the monthly or weekly entry. Nor do all authorities spell out clearly the conditions of the tenancy.

Some authorities go out of their way to be helpful. Thus, Wigtownshire informs its tenants of the system of rebates open to them. Lanarkshire attaches to the front of the card the breakdown of the charge, both annually and fortnightly, on a label run off on a computer and showing the charges for individual houses. This has been well received by tenants, as they then know what they are paying under individual headings.

There is a similar development in Edinburgh, where the introduction of computer-recording of rent collection is altering the whole system. Edinburgh is determined to do away with rent collectors and to issue each of its tenants with a computer print-out specifying the sum owed. It will have on it the standard rent, the gross annual value, rebates, supplementary charges, and the amount due.

In Glasgow, where no collectors are employed, the card lists rent, rates and rent rebate. Glasgow normally accepts payments on a monthly basis, except in the case of defaulting tenants, when it demands weekly payments. In all other cases in Glasgow, payment is made by 1352 banker's order, by post, by Giro, or by calling at collection offices throughout the city. In view of the security risks involved, we ought to be encouraging people to pay by means other than the use of collectors.

As I said at the outset, my Bill is modest, and, I hope, constructive. Already, its presentation has had a salutary effect. Thus the Town Clerk of the Burgh of Stornoway replied to an inquiry which I made of him, as I did of many other authorities in Scotland, by saying: You will see that the amount due in rent and rates is not shown separately, but, in this connection, the Burgh Chamberlain is in agreement with you, and he will shortly be putting a proposal to the Council for the amounts due in rent and rates to be shown on the rent book. I believe that what Stornoway is thinking of doing tomorrow, the rest of Scotland will be doing the day after. This is to assume that the Bill will itself not become law, and perhaps that is unthinkable.

I am proposing a Bill which will oblige Scottish local authorities to show rent and rates separately. I hope that a single uniform system might obtain throughout the country, not only to allow tenants to know what they must pay and what it constitutes, but also to encourage them to pay without the use of collectors.