Thousands of tenants in the East Suffolk district are still due more than £2million in council rent refunds, it has emerged.

On Thursday last week, members of East Suffolk Council's overview and scrutiny committee were presented with an update on the council’s effort to pay back residents after historical rent overcharging.

In February 2020, the council reported itself to the regulator for social housing after not complying with rent-setting regulations between 2016 and 2022.

At the time, the regulator concluded the scale of the issue was "significant" and had put "undue financial strain on both tenants and the public purse".

To address this, the council said it would reimburse those who had been overcharged.

Yesterday’s update revealed there were 3,754 current and former tenants still due a refund, with the total amount outstanding totalling just over £2m.

The issue stems back to a 2014 decision to start converting tenancies being re-let from social rent to affordable rent to provide additional funding for new development - in total, 9,280 tenancies were affected by the decision.

Of those still owed the money, 1,060 tenants have already been sent a letter inviting them to apply but have not yet requested a refund.

The report stated: “We have been regularly following up with these tenants, reminding them to apply and providing copies of letters where requested. In the majority of these cases, we have refunded the rent account in the meantime. ”

The council said although the remaining 2,694 tenants have not yet been sent a letter, the authority was in the process of cleaning its data of forwarding addresses so one can be sent "as quickly as possible".

The authority warned, however, the chance of locating all those affected was "unlikely".