Moray Council agrees housing budget for 2025/26
Moray Council has set its Housing Revenue Account (HRA) budget for the 2025/26 financial year in a special meeting of full council on 26 February 2025. The proposed budget outlines key financial plans and adjustments aimed at maintaining and enhancing council housing services.
Key decisions:
- Budget Allocation: The HRA expenditure budget for 2025/26 is £28.8 million, dedicated to the management, maintenance, and repair of council housing stock.
- Rent Adjustments: A 6% annual increase in council house rents has been agreed for the next three years (2025/26, 2026/27, and 2027/28). This adjustment aims to support ongoing housing services and investments.
- Garage and Site Rents: Similar to housing rents, there is to be a 6% annual increase for garage and garage site rents over the same three-year period.
- Service Developments: £12.117m is budgeted for the new build programme plus £2m for acquisitions.
These proposals are part of the council's commitment to ensuring the sustainability and quality of housing services in the region. The planned rent increases are designed to balance the need for investment in housing infrastructure with affordability considerations for tenants.
Since last year’s budget was set council housing stock is increasing by 26 homes in Keith, which are due for completion within coming weeks, a further five properties were purchased from the open market and several others to complete in the weeks ahead, while two trust properties at Ladyhill have been refurbished with both under occupation by next month.
The full HRA budget details are on the Moray Council website here.
Chair of Moray Council’s Housing and Community Safety Committee, Cllr Amber Dunbar, commented: “The council has made considerable progress as a strategic housing authority and landlord over the past year.
“Our management of homelessness stands out as an area of success. By prioritising prevention, the number of households losing their accommodation in the area has reduced and the prioritisation of families for prompt rehousing has minimised the number of children placed in temporary accommodation. The council’s management of rent arrears continues to improve and we are on track to rank amongst the best performing local authority landlords in Scotland.
“Our primary challenge, and the key focus of this year’s service enhancements, has been stock improvement. We’ve nearly completed an extensive programme of electrical certification and have implemented energy efficiency and other improvement measures across more than a thousand council homes. The scale of these efforts should not be underestimated and the considerable investment in windows, kitchens and bathrooms to improve the quality of homes is welcomed.
“I would like to emphasise that with the rent increase, Moray’s rents will remain amongst the lowest in Scotland. And this approach provides both the financial resources needed to maintain and improve our housing stock, whilst providing a level of certainty over the next three years for our tenants.”