HUNDREDS of council tenants in Mid Devon who have been unknowingly paying less rent than they should be because of a calculation error by the council will not have to pay more unless they move.

An audit of the district council’s finances revealed that the authority had made a mistake when calculating rent due on its social housing stock after part of a historic formula was being incorrectly applied.

An estimated 1,600 tenants are being undercharged rent, but the authority’s cabinet meeting heard that these underpayments cannot automatically be rectified.

“We can only change the rent lawfully when a tenancy changes, so underpayments, by law, have to remain in place,” Dean Emery, the council’s head of revenues, benefits and leisure told the meeting.

“We can identify them, but they will not be changed and letters have gone out to that effect. If a tenancy changes, then the rent can be corrected at that point.”

Instances where a tenant passes the property onto a family member equates to a new tenancy.

The council had already confirmed that it expects to have to spend £1.8 million of the roughly £2 million it holds in a reserve pots to refund roughly 1,200 tenants who had been overcharged.

It does have other housing-related reserves of more than £21 million, but these are classified as “earmarked”.

Mr Emery added that the process of calculating how much tenants who were overcharged might be owed had begun, and that some new tenancies that had started in recent weeks were now paying the correct rent.

“I am also personally looking at vulnerable customers with the Department for Work and Pensions to help those customers,” he added.

He said some calculations are more complex, especially if tenants had been receiving benefits such as Universal Credit.

Bradley Gerrard