For a council session which everyone saw to have a somewhat forgone conclusion a fair amount of passionate and scathing remarks flew this morning before the final vote on which council housing budget should be used, such as the one above from Labour Councillor Nurul Hoque Ali.
Before the meeting even started a member of the public bellowed out that Aberdeen has twice the national average of empty council houses (1800 to 900) leading to his swift dismissal. The intense repercussions of the meetings outcome were further echoed by the protests seen outside the building throughout the debate. The main point of contention was the 9.5% increase in council house rent rates; this follows last years 7.5% increase which was paired with a 10% rise in council tax.
The SNP argued that the steep increase is necessary to combat the major issue Aberdeen has with void council housing and existing housing not being up to living standards with Councillor Boulton saying “we shouldn’t hold ourselves to lower standards than we would a private landlord” during the debate. Every party presenting a budget agreed that getting people into homes and keeping them to standard were the key issues at hand. Councillor Radley went on to say “construction inflation, pandemic fallout as well as wars and other pressures” have led to the increases being necessary although with the proposal put forward having rent increasing at 5 times the rate of inflation, it being seen as a definitive answer to people’s problems was far from the case.
Labour Councillor Mohammad Tauqeer Malik followed this with a fiery proposal of his budget emphasising continuously the comparatively lower 5% increase in rent contained within it. During the majority of the rest of his time Councillor Malik ripped into the SNP and Lib Dem coalition citing multiple damming stats from the previous 3 years constantly providing comparisons from Labours previous administration.
The dramatic up turn in costs over this period cannot be overlooked however, as Councillor Copland mentioned stating that “Councillor Malik had to spend £20 million on council house repairs in 2022 compared to the £50 million the that was spent last year. A further proposition was made by the Conservatives Councillor Houghton with the main goal of maintaining funds looking forward beyond the next year. The main point taken from this, which all parties agreed upon, was appointing the chief executive to oversee the void property problem providing quarterly updates on the matter.
In their closing statement the SNP stated that the Labour proposition would “decimate” reserve funds leading to even steeper increases in the future which the SNP budget attempts to avoid. The final vote was won by the SNP budget proposition by a margin of 23 to 12 over the Labour amendment with 8 people abstaining. It will remain to be seen if the public will see any benefit from this decision, or if they will even be able to survive yet another steep increase in their bills.
Written by Marcus MacBeath
