Issue - meetings

That the Committee request that Cabinet consider spreading the proposed increases over a longer period of time to lessen the financial impact on Council tenants.

The Chief Officer (Housing & Communities) gave an overview on the Councils current position with regards to Communal Heating Charges, reporting that the portfolio currently operated eight communal heating schemes within Flintshire, with 417 properties on communal heating systems.  The Council had recently renegotiated the fuel tariff to be charges for 2023/24 as the previous contract ended in March 2023.

 New communal heating charges were based on the prior year’s energy use which ensured an accurate assessment of costs and impacts on the heating reserve account.  In order to recover the projected heating charges in full, there was a need to increase communal heating charges in line with the tariff increases.  The proposed recharges for 2023/24 were set out within the report.

The Strategic Finance Manager – Commercial & Housing reported that if the Council continued to calculate the charge in the same way as previous years, tenants who were on the Communal Heating systems would be subject to increases of up to 515%, based on the newly agreed gas tariff.  This was higher than the overall tariff increase of 420% as the revised communal charges came into effect from tenants from 31 July, 2023.  Work had been undertaken to shield tenants from the potential increase and therefore the proposed average increase to tenants was 197%.  This would mean that there would be a deficit remaining on the heating reserve of approximately £0.080m at the end of 2023/24 which would need to be recovered in future years as utilities prices recovered and stabilised.

Councillor Bernie Attridge said that he had sent questions ahead of the meeting to officers, as had the Leader of the Council as he was concerned over the proposed increase and said that he could not support such an increase to tenants at the current time.  He referred to officer comments around equity for all tenants but said that an argument could be made that tenants were subsiding those that were in rent arrears or damaged their properties before them becoming voids.  He said that he would like to see the costs being recovered over a longer period of time which had been done in the past and said that the majority of the tenants he represented in the two schemes listed in the report were vulnerable and were not able to claim for financial assistance as they were just above the threshold.  He hoped the Committee supported him in not supporting the increase.

            The Chief Officer referred to the e-mail exchange with Councillor Attridge and said that the Council aimed for full cost recovery on rent also, and were very proactive around this, as would be demonstrated in the report to the Committee at its next meeting.  She explained that the Council was passporting the charge from utility companies and had tried to mitigate the scale of the increase to tenants as shown in the report.  She referred to a decision in previous years to defer cost recovery over a three year period, but this had been reversed  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11