THE council is owed half a million pounds more in rent arrears than last year, in further evidence that the recession is hitting the borough’s hard-pressed tenants hard.

The authority's unaudited statement of accounts for 2008/09 shows the authority is now owed a whopping £5.59m in unpaid rent, a significant increase on the figure for the previous financial year.

And according to Conservative group deputy leader Michael Lewis, a large proportion of that money is likely to go uncollected – meaning millions of pounds of taxpayers' money will be lost.

Cllr Lewis said: “We are concerned about this.

“There needs to be better, more transparent monitoring so that we are able to identify the problem of rent arrears in advance, the system is not as transparent as it should be.”

Cllr Lewis said the council is not picking up problems with rent payment quickly enough and by the time an issue is identified the tenant may have moved home, meaning it is difficult to chase them.

The accounts also show that the numbers of people buying their homes from the council under Right to Buy has continued to plummet.

Only four tenants bought their homes off the council last year compared to 288 in 2003/04..

It is believed new regulations introduced in 2005, including increasing the qualifiying period from three to five years, reducing the Right to Buy discount and introducing a condition that the property is sold back to a social landlord, have reduced the scheme's popularity.

Earlier this year it was announced that council rents would increase by 5.8 per cent because of a government inflation-linked guideline.

But this has now revised downwards and the council has reduced the increase.