East Suffolk Council orders review after tenants overcharged since 2014

East Suffolk Council said it was commissioning a review to understand how rent issues were not identified and resolved sooner

A council has referred itself to the housing ombudsman after it came to light it had been overcharging tenants.

East Suffolk Council has admitted more than 700 council tenants might have overpaid rent for the past eight years.

The error came to light after a review relating to the authority's housing stock found improvements were needed to its rent-setting policies.

Council leader Steve Gallant said "any discrepancies in relation to rent payment will be resolved".

The council said "an in-depth, four-month review" of its Housing Landlord Service took place, following the appointment of a new head of housing last autumn.

It has about 4,500 properties but said the rent issue affected residents in the former Waveney area and related to decisions taken by its predecessor, Waveney District Council (WDC).

"We found a very disappointing situation where it appears that [there are] a number of properties where a higher level of rent has been levied against those properties than should have been," Mr Gallant, a Conservative, told the BBC.

'Outstanding issues'

He said the issue went back to 2014 when the government introduced an initiative which allowed local authorities to convert some of its housing from social rent to affordable housing rent, investing in those properties and bringing them up to a higher standard.

WDC was allowed to convert about 260 properties to affordable housing from social rent (meaning it could charge more for them), but converted about 1,000 properties, Mr Gallant said.

The authority has referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing and was "taking steps to resolve a number of outstanding issues".

It said it would also be commissioning a review to understand how these issues were not identified and resolved sooner.

Mr Gallant said the findings were "deeply disappointing".

"I want to personally reassure all our tenants that any discrepancies in relation to rent payment will be resolved and a drop in the standards they should expect will be confronted and addressed," he said.

"They are, and will remain, our number one priority and we are taking this matter incredibly seriously."

He said tenants would "absolutely get their money back" but it was a "very complex system".

Mr Gallant said that as each property could have had a number of tenants since 2014 they needed to "track everybody down" and also work out what was owed to tenants and what was owed in housing benefit to the Universal Credit system.

"But rest assured we will do everything we can to get that money back to the people that are owed it," he said.

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