Rent increase

Last night's Housing Committee meeting increased council house rents by 5.9%. This is a very big increase at a time when inflation is dropping towards 2%.

The Labour/Lib Dem Administration had originally proposed a much higher increase of 7%; I had an increase of 5% in mind; in the end 5.9% was an acceptable compromise.

There are a number of reasons why we need to increase our rents so much. The first is that previous Labour/Lib Dem administrations have saddled us with £125 million in housing debt. 34p of every pound paid in rent goes to pay interest on that debt. Yet we are demolishing schemes such as Maxwelltown where huge amounts of cash were spent just a few years ago.

The second is that we need to improve our houses to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard. This is pretty basic and it's not to the Council's credit that we have to spend so much to bring our council houses up to scratch.

The third is that we're clearing various multi storey developments. Many of the tenants are going to housing association properties, so we lose their rents. We are also losing houses through the Right to Buy ... although we get some money in from sales, the rent is lost for ever.

Finally, we could be more efficient. It takes us 68 days to relet one of our more popular houses, and 80 days for less popular houses. Why does it take so long? If we could improve our performance here by just one week, we'd bring in an extra £70,000 in rent.

We supported the 5.9% increase reluctantly. But if and when the SNP becomes Dundee's administration, reletting houses much more swiftlywill be one of our first priorities.