THOUSANDS of council tenants across the Culm Valley and the rest of Mid Devon have been charged the wrong rent for their homes for the past several years.

Auditors alerted the district council to the error, which has seen about 1,200 tenants paying too much and another 1,600 not paying enough.

Nearly all the council’s 3,000 properties have been affected by the error, which has seen the Liberal Democrat-run authority refer itself to the Regulator of Social Housing and begin working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions.

The council did not know for how long rent for tenants was being wrongly collected but discovered the error at the end of the summer when auditors raised concerns ‘dating back a number of years’.

Council leader Cllr Luke Taylor said anybody who had paid too much would be refunded the money, while the council was not going to claim back anything from those who had been undercharged.

Cllr Taylor said the authority was ‘in the process of’ calculating sums involved but he was unable to say how much money the totals were likely to be, nor the sort of individual amounts tenants had been over or under charged.

He said all tenants affected by the error had already been written to by the council’s housing staff.

Cllr Taylor said: “We apologise for this and are working hard to correct the error as quickly as possible and will be sending out further letters with more detailed advice soon.

“It is rare to uncover an historic anomaly within such a prescribed calculation as the rent formula.

“However, when such issues come to light it is down to the administration of the day to see that actions are taken to address them.

“We recognise the effect this may have on our tenants while we work swiftly to resolve this mistake, and are sorry for any distress that this causes.”

Cllr Taylor said tenants did not need to do anything, as the council would contact them with details of how they were individually affected, but anybody with concerns could call the authority’s customer services team.

The error arose when the council wrongly applied Government guidelines for calculating social housing formula rents, using a set formula.

It is thought to have based rents on an average capital value for each property by bedroom size rather than the individual capital value of each property.

Cllr Taylor said there were a number of affordable rent tenants and leaseholds across the district which were not impacted by the error.

He said one of the issues to be considered before making any refunds was how much of a tenant’s rent payments had been paid by housing benefit or Universal Credit, or might be in arrears.

Cllr Taylor assured tenants that any higher rent charges as a result of the review would not come into effect during an existing tenancy agreement.

He said: “We want to reassure all those affected that we will support them with any changes to their rent charges.”