Aberdeen City Council is considering changing the way it calculates tenants rent so it is simpler for tenants to understand and easier for the council to manage.

Rent setting is not the same as the annual rent increase which increases rent by a certain percentage each year.

The current rent setting system is over 50 years old and is very complicated. It is based on the Gross Annual Value [GAV] of a property which is calculated by the District Valuer.

The GAV figure is arrived at by a formula based on the attributes and facilities of a property being given a value from a set of tables which can include over 12 separate factors. This system produces over 750 different rent levels for the council's housing stock of 22,000 homes.

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Aberdeen City Council's Housing and Environment Director Pete Leonard said: "The City Council wants to introduce a system that is simpler, fairer and easier for everyone to understand. At the same time we need to ensure that rents remain affordable for our tenants and reflect certain differentials within the housing stock like the size, type and location of the property.

"We hope to reduce the number of rent levels which stands at around 750 but before we go any further we would like to give tenants an opportunity to tell us which factors they think should be considered when setting rents. Tenants' views are important to the council so we hope they will make their views known to us."

Tenants will be sent a short questionnaire which they are being asked to complete and return to the council by Monday 19 December 2011.

A £50 shopping voucher will go to one lucky tenant whose response to the survey is selected at random.

The council will also hold a series of tenant focus groups to discuss the issue in more detail before it reports its findings and recommendations to the Housing and Environment Committee. Tenants will have the opportunity to join one of these groups when completing the questionnaire.

(GK)