Council House Rent Battle On At Highland Council Meeting As Some Members Try For A Reduced Increase on Thursday 13 February

8th February 2025

The meeting of Highland council on Thursday 13 February 2025 will discuss a motion that tries to make a change to the increase in council rents agreed at an earlier meeting of the Housing and Property Committee agreed narrowly to increase the council rents by 8%. Part of the issue is that the council are trying to raise money for more new houses by increasing the rents for existing tenants. Some councillors think that is unfairly hitting tenants at a time of already hard cost of living issues.

Some people may think that even the 6% now proposed is to high as that figure although reduced is above inflation . The original 8% if upheld is even more above inflation.

The agenda for Thursdays meeting is as follows-

There is circulated an extract of the Minutes of the Meeting of the Housing and Property Committee of 29 January 2025.

With reference to these Minutes, the following Notice of Amendment has been received in accordance with Standing Order 13 -

"We the undersigned, being Elected Members of the Highland Council, hereby seek alteration of the decision of 29 January 2025 by the Housing and Property Committee to increase Council House 2025/26 rents by 8% by deleting expenditure line for Capital Investment Funded from Current Revenue £1.346 million, relating to "additional funding for capital investment in energy efficiency and external fabric from rent increase", and make corresponding reduction in House Rents Income to £69.717 million. Reducing the rent increase for 25/26 to approximately 6%".

Signed:
Mr A Graham
Mr A Baxter
Mr M Reiss
Mr R Gale
Dr M Gregson
Mr R Stewart
Mr A Christie
Mr M Baird
Mrs A MacLean
Mrs J McEwan
Mr J Edmondson
Mrs L Saggers
Mrs I MacKenzie
Mr J McGillivray
Ms M MacCallum

In this connection, there is re-circulated Report No HP/01/25 by the Assistant Chief Executive - Place.

So who voted for the big increase - The ruling administration
Mrs S Atkin
Mr B Boyd
Mr R Bremner
Mr I Brown
Mrs Campbell-Sinclair
Mr L Fraser
Mr R Mackintosh
Mr C Munro
Mrs M Reid

Basically the ruling administration led by SNP carried the vote.

The councillors who voted against the full increase with an amendment by
Mr A Graham
Dr M Gregson
Mrs I Mackenzie
Mrs A MacLean
Ms J McEwan
Mr R Stewart

The amendment was lost by 8 votes to 6

The vote will be taken again by the full council on the amendment proposal. Will the full council vote uphold what many tenants view as a very unfair rent increase in these hard times.

The agenda paper can be found at
https://www.highland.gov.uk/meetings/meeting/5125/highland_council

Watch The Meeting
The meeting will be broadcast live at 2.00pm on 13 February 2025.
View The Meeting HERE