Council House Rents (Huddersfield) (Hansard, 24 July 1972)

§ Mr. Amery

The Council wrote informally to ask for an indication of the likelihood of a direction under Clause226W 62(4) of the Bill in respect of the increase towards fair rents required under the Bill in October, 1972. Attached is a copy of the Department's reply: Thank you for your letter of 4th July together with supplementary information in support of your request for an indication of whether a direction is likely to be issued in due course under what is now Clause 62(4) of the Housing Finance Bill in respect of the increase towards fairrents in October 1972 which your council would be required to make under Part VI of the Bill. We note that your council have made a preliminary assessment of the fair rent of 6,874 council dwellings in the light of the age, type, general condition, character, location and size of the dwellings. When that assessment is compared with the existing rents it shows that if an increase of £1 per week were to be applied to the rents of some 1,283 dwellings, being 19 per cent. of the sample, the rents would exceed the likely fair rent by amounts ranging from 5p to 30p per week. We understand from a conversation with the council's officers that the council consider that the sample is representative of the whole stock of qualifying dwellings. If the figures of the sample are applied to the total stock, we note that for about one third of those dwellings, for which an increase of £1 per week is estimated to bring the rent above the estimated fair rent, the likely excess is estimated at 5p per week, that for about a further one third of those dwellings the estimated excess would be about 10p a week and that for the remaining one third the excess would be in the range of 15p to 30p a week. While we would not necessarily agree with all the estimates in your letter, it does appear to us, having considered the information provided by the council that, if no direction were given under Clause 62(4), it is likely that the increase towards fair rents of £1 per week for each qualifying dwelling which your council would be required to make in the year 1972–73 would result in the rents of somewhat more than 2 per cent. of those dwellings being substantially above their fair rents. Thus, it seems that, to avoid the likelihood of such a result, the amount of that increase towards fair rents (which is an average amount) should be less than £1 per week, so as to enable your council to distribute or apportion the increase as may be necessary within the maximum of £1 per week for any individual dwelling permitted by the Bill. Accordingly, I am writing to inform you that the Secretary of State would be willing, when the Bill is in force, to give a direction under Clause 62(4) that your council's increase towards fair rents in the year 1972–73 should be 98p per week which could be distributed or apportioned among the qualifying dwellings in such manner as the authority may determine in accordance with what is now Clause 62(6) of the Bill. That direction will not affect the fair rents to be determined for your council's Housing Revenue Account dwellings. The determination of fair rents is not a matter for the Secretary of State 227W but is the responsibility of the housing authority and the rent scrutiny board in accordance with Part V of the Bill. Nor will the direction relate to the amount of any increase towards fair rents for the council's qualifying dwellings in 1973–74 or subsequent years. The Town Clerk, PO Box A19, Huddersfield, HD1 2SY, Yorks.