“I can give our tenants a firm guarantee that no rent rise of this size will be imposed on them,” she said.

“We have absolutely no intention of asking people to pay rents at anything like this level.

“This figure was quoted by the housing convener (Councillor Chris Hind), but it is simply one of the options put forward by consultants who have examined how standards could be improved in Dundee.

“Of course we want to improve our housing stock for the benefit of our tenants, but we will definitely not be pushing rents up by this amount.”

In Dundee a large proportion of rental income goes on servicing the city housing debt of £115 million, leaving little over for improvements.

The Executive would have been prepared to write off that debt, but only if the council’s housing stock was transferred to other landlords.

Following a consultation exercise on behalf of the Dundee Federation of Tenants’ Associations, which found that the majority of those who responded were in favour of remaining with the council, the administration ruled out stock transfer.

However, only a few hundred of the 16,500 tenants did respond, resulting in questions being raised about the validity of the exercise.

Without more money being made available to the council by the Executive it has been suggested that rent increases of £30 a week over the next three years would be required to enable the council to meet the new standards.

But today Mrs Shimi insisted, “That is just not going to happen. There is no need for panic or alarm.”

She said she appreciated tenants would be worried by the mere suggestion that rents could go up by so much and wanted to reassure them that neither the council’s administration nor the Scottish Executive would allow it to happen.

Mrs Shimi said the council was working very hard on preparing robust proposals for meeting the standards and providing quality housing for tenants and once these had been worked out they would be put to the tenants to allow them to give their views.

She said affordability of rents was regarded by the administration as an important element of providing quality housing and she acknowledged the kind of rent increase that had been talked about would not be affordable.

Apart from seeking more funding from the Executive the council is in a position to use a new borrowing regime called the Prudential Framework, which has recently come into effect and gives local authorities more flexibility.

“We are confident we will be able to deliver quality housing for our tenants and we will not consider anything that would involve a rent increase of £30 a week,” she said.

Mrs Shimi confirmed it was the administration’s view that wholesale transfer of the housing stock to other landlords was not the right solution for Dundee.

“We will not be looking at wholesale stock transfer like Glasgow, but that does not mean things will stand still as far as council housing in Dundee is concerned,” she said.

“We are now starting to look in detail at ways of meeting the standards for the benefit of our tenants. However, a huge increase in council house rent is definitely a non-starter.”