Rent increases will hit the middle-earners hard

Published: 20 May, 2011

• WESTMINSTER Council tenants already pay the highest rents in London and last month the Conservatives increased rents again, this time by 6.4 per cent. 

Now they want the power to increase rents again for everyone and are using the fact that some council households have more than one wage earner on average pay as their excuse.

Westminster Conservatives say that council households earning £50,000 a year are rich. Despite the fact that these households are typically likely to include two adults earning £25,000 a year each, an average wage for someone in London. 

These two adults may well have one or two children at university, each faced with £9,000 a year tuition fees. 

Or they may be saving up for a deposit to buy their own home. 

Why are Westminster Conservatives picking on these hard-working middle earners, the backbone of the community?

There is little doubt they are using the £50,000-a-year figure as a Trojan horse to get the power to put up the rents of everybody, not just those hard-pressed middle earners they consider to be rich. 

Their claim that a rent increase for those on average wages will help pensioners and low-income households is totally bogus.

What is more, the figures used by the Conservatives are based on a six-year-old and out-of-date household survey which they have manipulated to give the figures they want in order to persuade the government to give them the power to put up council rents to near market levels.

Council tenants all over Westminster – and in Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham – should beware.

CLLR PAUL DIMOLDENBERG 
Leader of the Labour Group