A housing chief has called for low rents all round at a major national conference in Bradford.

Chairman of the housing corporation Baroness Dean admitted at the Local Government Housing Conference that rents of some housing association properties were too high.

But she said the good news for association tenants in Bradford and the rest of the country is that housing associations will continue trying to peg their rents in response to a Government request.

Baroness Dean said they were aiming to keep them at the Retail Price Index - the government index of inflation which stands at 3.7 per cent - plus one per cent for any future increases.

Today director of Manningham Housing Association Anil Singh revealed that rents to his 650 tenants would rise by around four per cent from April, less than the recommended 4.7 per cent.

He said: "We fully endorse the Baroness's commitment to affordability."

Baroness Dean - who was brought up in a council house - said funding for housing was insufficient and looked unlikely to change substantially in the immediate future.

She said challenges facing politicians and Council officers were getting bigger and more complicated.

"Aside from dealing with the backlog in repairs to your own stock, there are also enormous problems dealing with warn out owner/occupied stock," she told delegates at the Stakis Bradford in Norfolk Gardens.

"Across the country there are tens of thousands of poor quality, pre-1919 terraced houses which have not been looked after properly by their often elderly owners.

"Even if many had the money, the task of keeping up a home reaching the end of its active life would have been beyond their reach."

Baroness Dean called on the 400 delegates at the conference to get social housing back on centre stage as the essential third component to health and education.

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