While council leaders welcomed the government’s announcement last week that it will limit the level of rent increases for council tenants, many say they are unclear how the shortfall will be filled. Most councils had only recently set their budget and calculated benefit entitlements based on a rent increases of 6.2 per cent. Now as the government says it wants a rise of just 3.1 per cent and councils are calling the announcement a fiasco, saying that the climbdown proved that tenants’ rents should be set locally by councils and not by central government.
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