Many historic evictions in Mid Devon could be reviewed

Roughly 70 to be looked at

Around 70 council tenant evictions could be reviewed in Mid Devon as council officials grapple with social housing rent errors.

Councillors have heard about cases where rent arrears were the sole factor, or a contributory one, in situations leading to the eviction of tenants after they were overcharged rent.

The district council’s audit committee heard that these historic cases would be reviewed once it had dealt with the major issue of refunding hundreds of tenants it has been overcharging for years.

In other cases beyond the 70 highlighted, where rent arrears were one of several or more serious factors, the council said issues such as anti-social behaviour, crime, unauthorised uses and tenancy fraud were the predominant reason for eviction.

The council estimates that around £1.8 million will be needed to repay roughly 1,200 tenants who have been paying more rent than they should have.

Legal advice suggests the council only needs to repay tenants six years’ worth of overpaid rent.

Once individual amounts have been calculated – a process complicated by the types of benefits each resident may have received – tenants will be told whether they will also receive compensation on top of their rent repayment.

In terms of the 70 eviction cases, various “mitigation factors” could protect the council from any required action.

These include rent levels being set in good faith and agreed with the tenant, overcharing still leading to rents within expected social-rent levels and below affordable or market level ones, and that people on low incomes could still have received up to 100 per cent support for their rent payments.

“In the unlikely event any [of these eviction cases] falls outside of these factors, then they will be subject to a specific legal review and any next steps agreed on a case-by-case basis,” the audit committee heard.

The wider social rent error of over and undercharging tenants goes back to 2002, but was only identified towards the end of last year by the council’s new auditor, Bishop Fleming.

The issue was caused by the council applying a rent formula to its whole stock in one go, rather than segmenting it by property size and applying the formula on each of segment individually.

This also led to around 1,600 tenants being undercharged, but none of these will be required to make up any lost rent.

The correct rent will only be charged on such tenants if they move, or if a younger member of the family takes on the tenancy.

The council has stressed that the issue is a national one, with roughly 20 other councils dealing with the same problem.

As soon as the error was identified, the council says it referred itself to the Regulator for Social Housing.