Partick Housing Association has denied claims by Living Rent that the tenants’ union won a promise of “massive rent reductions” in one of the Association’s block of flats.

According to Living Rent, the promise comes after intensive campaigning in the area against sky high rents and the state of disrepair in many properties.

Living Rent said its members Linda and Joe Connon proved that rents at 7 Inchholm Street of around £614pm were “excessive and abnormal” when compared to other properties in the area and across the country.

After getting residents at the block to display a poster in support of their union, and gathering more information about rents locally, they requested a meeting with Partick Housing Association to discuss and present their findings.

According to Living Rent, this meeting resulted in Partick Housing Association announcing it would be changing the way in which it sets the cost of rent for each of its properties.

Living Rent’s Glasgow organiser, Sean Baillie, said: “No longer would properties which have stood for many years continue to be slapped with a ‘new build levy’, their pricing matrix would be changing to bring these properties down to the level of others in the area. Leading to promises massive rent reductions that could mean tenants paying over £100 less per month. This alone was a massive victory for tenants of the block but Linda persevered and managed to win extensive repairs for the full block within weeks of this initial meeting.”

However Partick Housing Association told Scottish Housing News that while it is considering making changes to its rents, nothing has been confirmed as yet.

A spokesperson said: “Over the past year, we have been working with our customers and our tenant led Scrutiny Panel to simplify our rents to ensure that what we charge across all of our housing stock is affordable, equitable, transparent, consistent and reasonable. In common with all other social landlords, Partick Housing Association is currently consulting all of our tenants on our rent proposals for 2018/19.

“We would confirm that no decision has been made at this time but we will write to all of our tenants in February 2018 confirming what our updated rent charges will be once they have been fully considered and finalised.

“Whilst we acknowledge addressing a query from Living Rent in relation to one specific tenant, we would like to clarify that any proposed changes to our rent charges will be applied consistently to all of our tenancies and in line with our policy and are not influenced by any campaign.”