Thousands of council house tenants owed millions

Some 3,754 council house tenants are still owed more than £2m in rent refunds after being overcharged by their local authority.

The issue in East Suffolk dates from a 2014 decision by to re-let properties based on "affordable rents" rather than "social rents" to provide additional funding for new development - affecting 9,280 tenants.

In 2020, the district council reported itself to the government's Regulator of Social Housing which confirmed it had not complied with rent-setting regulations between 2016 and 2022.

The authority warned the chance of locating all those affected was "unlikely".

East Suffolk Council was created in 2019 by merging the two smaller district councils of Waveney and Suffolk Coastal.

The regulator concluded the scale of the rent issue was "significant" and had put "undue financial strain on both tenants and the public purse".

To address this, the council said it would reimburse those tenants who had been overcharged.

Its overview and scrutiny committee has now been presented with an update on repayments.

A council report said: “We have been regularly following up with these tenants, reminding them to apply and providing copies of letters where requested.

"In the majority of these cases, we have refunded the rent account in the meantime."

Of those still owed the money, 1,060 tenants have already been sent a letter inviting them to apply but have not yet requested a refund, reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The council said although the remaining 2,694 tenants had not yet been sent a letter, the authority was in the process of cleaning its data of forwarding addresses so one can be sent "as quickly as possible".

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