5. Rent levels and income from rents (Charts 3 and 4)
In 2009-10 the 26 local authorities with council houses are budgeting to raise a total £877 million in income from standard rents on their 320,200 houses. The average rent of £52.67 per week in 2009-10 is an increase of £2.31 (4.6%) over the average of £50.36 per week in 2008-09. In the 11 years between 1997-98 and 2008-09 rents increased by a little under 12% in real terms, a real increase of about 1% per year. Within the overall Scottish average there is a wide variation between councils in average rents, from £40.77 per week in 2009-10 in Moray to £63.59 in Edinburgh, a difference of £22.82 per week.
It should be noted that these figures may be expected to be lower than rents reported in other publications as, rather than taking a weighted average of set rents charged to tenants, they instead reflect the amount earned by the council in respect of each property owned (calculated by dividing the Council's Standard Rental Income on Houses by the total letting stock at September). This method takes into account the proportion of housing which spends some time unlet and those for which rent is not successfully collected.
Housing benefit accounts for a high and increasing proportion of council rent income. In 2009-10, rent rebate subsidy is expected to be £526m, representing 60% of total income from standard rents. Rent rebate subsidy as a proportion of standard rents varies from 33% in Midlothian to 77% in Dundee. Rent rebate subsidy in some councils - notably Edinburgh and West Lothian - appears unfeasibly high in 2007-08 because housing allowance received for households in some forms of temporary accommodation was included in the councils total figure.
