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Northern Ireland Department of Finance suggests inflation-busting rent hikes
Civil servants from Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance have suggested huge rent increases in Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) stock to help balance the region’s books.
In a briefing on the budgetary outlook for Northern Ireland released today, the department moots annual rent increases of Consumer Price Index plus 3% for NIHE tenants from 2018/19.
The department claims the move would generate £8m a year for reinvestment in the landlord’s 86,500 homes.
The briefing sets out the budget options which will be available to ministers in the event that an Executive is restored at Stormont and is not a policy document.
Normally, the finance minister would have presented a draft budget to the Assembly for approval, but Northern Ireland has been without a functioning government since a power-sharing agreement between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein broke down in January.
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The Department for Communities, which funds the NIHE, is set to see its budget fall by up to £79.7m (8.7%) by 2019/20, the briefing states.
It identifies housing as one of four public services which require “transformation” due to increasing cost pressures, along with health, education and justice.
“Given the pressures on the housing maintenance budget, the Executive may wish to consider increased housing Executive rents,” it says.
“These would need to be part of a longer-term multi-annual programme of rent increases stretching further into the future.”
The increase would bring NIHE rents in line with housing association rents in the region which are currently 25% higher in real terms, the document adds.
It notes that further consideration would be needed as social rent hikes “would see any corresponding increase in housing benefit above the current forecast level having to be met by the Executive budget”.
The NIHE said it did not have anything to add.
A consultation on the document is open until 26 January.
