Council house tenants in Oxford have welcomed news a planned increase in rents is to be halved.

Householders in council homes were told they would pay a 6.5 per more from April.

But the reduction will mean rents increase by about 3.2 per cent, although the council is calculating the exact saving for each household.

The move comes after the Government agreed to give local authorities in England £175m to allow them to reduce rent increases.

A 3.3 per cent reduction in rent would see a family-of-five, like Gemma Barrett’s, save £139.88 a year on their three-bedroom property in Lambourn Road, Rose Hill.

Mrs Barrett would have seen her weekly council rent rise from £81.24 to £86.52 a week. She is now only likely to pay £83.73 a week.

Mrs Barrett said: “The previous rise was quite a lot so we’re pretty pleased. Any extra money is better in our pocket than the council’s.”

Dorothy Dykes, 60, of Danvers Road, Rose Hill, is set to save £119.62 a year. She would have seen her weekly council rent rise from £69.70 to £74.23. She is now likely to pay £71.93 a week.

She said: “We’ll be pleased to save money on the rent.”

The chairman of Churchill Tenants and Residents Association, Peter Bonney, said: “This is definitely good news. Council tax has already gone up a lot and if rents had gone up higher than that it would have hit people hard.

“This should means people won’t fall in arrears with their council house rent and their council tax.”

Ed Turner, the council's executive member for housing, said: “The amount we charge for council house rent is very much determined by Government policy and I personally lobbied to see the rate of rent increase reduced this year.

“We don’t want to be increasing people’s rents by an amount that will be causing them problems.

“Putting it up by twice the rate of inflation is the wrong thing to be doing, and fortunately the Government have listened to us.

“We’re delighted at this because it didn’t seem sensible to be putting up rents so much as we are entering a recession.”