People living in council homes in North Lanarkshire are being asked to give their views on rent restructuring proposals.

Rents charged by North Lanarkshire Council will remain the second lowest in Scotland this year, and significantly lower than those charged by other local housing providers.

Stephen Llewellyn, head of housing solutions, said: “The way we currently work out rental charges is difficult to follow with 192 different variations across our 36,500 homes.

“We want to make this system much fairer and easier to understand. To do this, we want our tenants to give us their views on our proposals.

“The changes won’t increase the overall amount we collect and every penny will continue to be spent improving council houses across North Lanarkshire. Housing standards and investment have improved significantly, and we need a structure which accurately reflects this.”

The council’s current structure calculates rent charged on a number of factors including:

A premium is also added to new build homes to reflect quality and building standards.

“The new structure being proposed aims to be easy and straightforward to understand, set the same rent for same house type and size right across North Lanarkshire and be fair and consistently applied for all residents,” added Stephen Llewellyn.

The consultation will run until 1 July with a newsletter and survey form being delivered to every council home from the beginning of June.