27-03-2025
Mid Devon council to review 70 rent overcharge evictions
About 70 council tenant evictions could be reviewed in Mid Devon as council officials grapple with social housing rent errors dating back to are cases where rent arrears were the sole factor, or a contributory one, leading to the eviction of tenants after they were overcharged, according to the Local Democracy Reporting cases are to be reviewed once Mid Devon District Council has dealt with the major issue of refunding about 1,200 tenants it had been overcharging for other cases beyond the 70 highlighted, where rent arrears were one of several factors, the council said anti-social behaviour, crime, unauthorised uses and tenancy fraud were the predominant reasons for eviction.
'Mitigation factors'
The council estimates it needs £1.8 million to repay roughly 1,200 tenants who have been paying more rent than they should advice suggests the council only needs to repay six years of overpaid rent, according to individual amounts have been calculated tenants will be told whether they will also receive terms of the 70 eviction cases, the council said various "mitigation factors" could protect it from any required action.
These include rent levels being set in good faith and agreed with the tenant, overcharging still leading to rents within expected social-rent levels and people on low incomes could have received up to 100% support for their wider social rent error of over and under charging tenants goes back to 2002, but was only identified towards the end of last year by the council's new auditor, Bishop 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 segment also led to about 1,600 tenants being soon as the error was identified, the council said it referred itself to the Regulator for Social Housing.
