FOI Request - Rent Arrears and Evictions
Request 101002543540
I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for information held by the council
Specifically, I would like the following information:
1. Percentage increases on rent imposed on social tenants by the council in each of the last ten years.
2. The total number of council tenants in each of the last ten years.
3. The total value of rent arrears accumulated by council tenants, and the number of council tenants who have accumulated rent arrears in each of the last ten years.
4. Details of all evictions carried out on council tenants in the last ten years, including the number of evictions carried out and the reasons for the evictions.
5. The number of council tenants currently facing evictions, including all active eviction notices.
Response 03-08-2020
1. This information is exempt under Section 25 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; Information Otherwise Accessible and Available.
• Prior to 2014/15, this information is published in full council committee minutes. Please find a link to the web page here, select committee ‘The Moray Council’ or ’The Moray Council special’ and document type ‘minute’. Budgets are finalised around January/February each year and contain the rent increase for the financial year commencing in April. For example, for the 2013/14 rent increase, the minute would be dated around January/February 2013 and the item discussed will be the Housing Revenue Account Budget.
• From 2014/15, the Scottish Housing Regulator publishes this information through the Annual Return on the Charter (ARC). Please find a link to the web page here and see ‘Charter Data All Social Landlords Complete Dataset All Available Years’ (Indicator 21 – the % average weekly rent increase to be applied in the next reporting year). The 2019/20 ARC data has yet to be published but the increase for 2020/21 is 3% - again this would be recorded within full Committee minutes published here.
2. Figures have been supplied for the number of secure tenancies at the end of each reporting year.
31 March 2010 - 5,717
31 March 2011 - 5,705
31 March 2012 - 5,719
31 March 2013 - 5,850
31 March 2014 - 5,893
Data from 2014/15 to 2019/20 is exempt under Section 25 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; Information Otherwise Accessible and Available.
The Scottish Housing Regulator published this information through the Annual Return on the Charter. Please find a link to the web page here and see ‘Charter Data All Social Landlords Complete Dataset All Available Years’ (Indicator 2.1.7 – the total of existing tenants).
From 2020/21 this indicator is no longer reported nationally.
31 March 2020 – data has yet to be finalised but a provisional figure is 5,971.
3. In accordance with section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 we can confirm that data prior to 2012/13 is not held.
Data provided is for gross rent arrears as at the end of each reporting year.
31 March 2013 - £371058 and 1303 rent accounts
31 March 2014 – £377,457 and 1119 rent accounts
From 2014/15 to 2019/20, this information is partly exempt under Section 25 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; Information Otherwise Accessible and Available.
The Scottish Housing Regulator publishes the total value of rent arrears through the Annual Return on the Charter. Please find a link to the web page here and see ‘Charter Data All Social Landlords Complete Dataset All Available Years’ (Indicator 31.1 – the total value of gross rent arrears).
The 2019/20 ARC data has yet to be published so figure has been provided below along with the total number of rent accounts which is data that is not published:
31 March 2015 – 1150 rent accounts
31 March 2016 – 1119 rent accounts
31 March 2017 – 1093 rent accounts
31 March 2018 – 1146 rent accounts
31 March 2019 – 1229 rent accounts
31 March 2020 – £485,153 and 1506 rent accounts.
4. This information is exempt under Section 25 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; Information Otherwise Accessible and Available.
Both the Scottish Government and the Scottish Housing Regulator publish statistics on evictions. As the Scottish Housing Regulator data is only available from 2014/15, we would recommend you refer to the Scottish Government published statistics here. Refer to Excel evictions file near end of the webpage and use tab ‘TblLA detail’ which can be filtered for each reporting year. This contains the ‘number of cases resulting in an eviction’ and the reason.
Data for 2019/20 has yet to be published but the figures are 11 evictions in total.
10 = unpaid rent
1 = other. Due to the low numbers involved, disclosure of the reason could lead to the identification of individuals and is therefore exempt under section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002; Personal Information.
5. 7 tenants with Live Ejection Decrees in effect as at 31/07/2020