£9 million in unpaid rent written off by Leeds City Council

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Central Government

Leeds City Council has written off nearly £9 million of its tenants unpaid rent arrears in the past five years.

Nearly £3 million was written off by the Council in 2007-08, 2% of the total rent due.

And The Yorkshire Evening Post reported that there are concerns that even more tenants could struggle to pay for rents when housing benefit changes come in late next year.

The Government are forecasting that those affected by the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ will be on average £13 a week worse off.

The Council are currently calculating the impact the coming under-occupancy rules will have on its tenants.

Leeds City Councillor Peter Gruen said: “We think about 7,500 people will be directly affected by the under-occupancy rule.

“To place all those people into the right category of bedrooms would take us five years assuming we didn’t offer homes to anyone else, so we will never achieve that.

“People could struggle with their rent and fall into arrears and that will cost us money. There are difficult issues facing both tenants and us the council.”

The unpaid rent arrears were written off for a number of a reasons, including when tenants have died, when they have become untraceable and in cases of bankruptcy.

Councillor Gruen continued: “We are putting a lot of effort into reducing the amount of money having to be written off, and this is having an impact as the figure is decreasing. In 2007/8 just under £3million in former tenants arrears were written off, whereas in 2011-12 writes offs amounted to £1m.

“I have always had a huge reluctance to see these debts written off as it is public money that we do not want the council to lose.

“We work with people who cannot pay their rent to assess the help available to them, but will take legal action against those refusing to pay.”