Thousands of UK renters owed £216 each after being overcharged

Thousands of council house tenants are still owed more than £2 MILLION in rent refunds after being overcharged by their local authority. The issue in East Suffolk dates from a 2014 decision by to re-let properties based on "affordable rents".

This is rather than "social rents" to provide additional funding for new development - affecting 9,280 tenants. In 2020, the district council reported itself to the government's Regulator of Social Housing which confirmed it had not complied with rent-setting regulations between 2016 and 2022. The authority warned the chance of locating all those affected was "unlikely".

The regulator concluded the scale of the rent issue was "significant" and had put "undue financial strain on both tenants and the public purse". To address this, the council said it would reimburse those tenants who had been overcharged.

READ MORE: HMRC to snatch '64 per cent of people's pensions' after exemption scrapped

READ MORE: Millions of state pensioners dealt new £21 blow

READ MORE New 50 per cent energy bill social tariff could replace £300 Winter Fuel Payments

A council report said: “We have been regularly following up with these tenants, reminding them to apply and providing copies of letters where requested. In the majority of these cases, we have refunded the rent account in the meantime."

The issue stems back to a 2014 decision to start converting tenancies being re-let from social rent to affordable rent to provide additional funding for new development - in total, 9,280 tenancies were affected by the decision.

Of those still owed the money, a whopping 1,060 tenants have already been sent a letter inviting them to apply but have not yet requested a refund. The council said although the remaining 2,694 tenants have not yet been sent a letter, the authority was in the process of cleaning its data of forwarding addresses so one can be sent "as quickly as possible".

The regulator concluded the scale of the issue was "significant" and had put "undue financial strain on both tenants and the public purse" after a probe.