The debate in full council (September 7) on the future management of the residential properties the town owns and rents out got very noisy and somewhat confused.
One councillor wanted to keep personalities and individuals out of it: “We must deal with this as properties not people.” Later, another councillor all but flipped that statement: “We’ve got to look at people as well as properties.”
At the heart of the matter are residential properties for which rents have lagged well below market prices. As these are owned for the benefit of Marlborough, councillors want to bring the rents up to date. But how they should do this was shown during the debate to be a very difficult problem indeed – one councillor described it as ‘multi-faceted’.
The meeting began with a series of eight questions from Sylvia Card (Vice Chair of the Devizes Constituency Labour Party.) These could not be answered then and there, but did inform the later debate.
Councillor Cook suggested dissolving the council’s property portfolio and using the money to finance affordable homes – or even a refugee centre. Councillor Dow looked back to see why these problems had arisen: “We’ve had the [rent] figures every year. It’s our fault.”
Anxieties had been expressed as to how some of the tenants might cope with sudden rent increases – with some specific concerns raised in Ms Card’s questions. Councillor Lisa Farrell: “My concern is this – have we spoken to every tenant? As we all know housing is hard to get in Marlborough. Do we know how are tenants are?”
There was a row over legal advice given by the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) about the type of tenancy agreement the council was – or perhaps was not – offering and whether new legal advice on the agreements was needed. This led to the strange occurrence of two councillors ‘disassociating’ themselves from the debate and the votes because what was proposed was against the NALC advice and so, they said, was ‘illegal’. But they continued to sit at the council table.
Councillor Dobson said he was certain the Town Clerk would not allow them to do anything illegal: “We’re going to get the benefit of legal advice from whichever agent we go with – leave the legal side to the agents. Tonight we’re not agreeing to anything that is illegal.”
In the end councillors voted to proceed with the recommendations of the council’s working party on its residential properties. This will mean handing the management over to ‘a commercial external agent’ – and specifically asking the successful agent for new estimates of market rents for the properties and for legal advice.
They also confirmed that rents should be moved to within ten per sent of market rental values. And asks that a draft ‘Lettings Policy’ is submitted to council once an agent is appointed.
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