Today the Government lays regulations to bring the overall benefit cap into force from April 2013. This measure – which restricts the total amount of benefits an out-of-work family can receive to £26,000 a year – proved to be one of the biggest flashpoints of recent welfare reform.
The Government lost a crunch vote that amended the cap to remove child benefit, although Ministers overturned it by citing financial privilege. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was forced to … Read more
We’ve just finished watching David Cameron’s major speech on welfare reform. In case you missed it, he is proposing that housing benefit should no longer be available to under 25s. It’s already kicked off a wealth of comment, with Conservative Home asking whether this a bold way to cut down a burgeoning benefits bill, or a political gamble that could ‘re-toxify’ the Conservative brand.
Here are five good reasons why cutting off this support could hold back … Read more
Yesterday I went to the DWP to hear the first findings [PDF] from the project monitoring the impact of changes to the Local Housing Allowance – the housing benefit for private renters.
It was interesting but ultimately inconclusive. The researchers summarised very clearly ‘the results of the two surveys do not lend themselves to a concise or straightforward summary of the main effect so far’.
The report itself warns the results are an indication of ‘emerging trends and early signs … Read more
The Housing Minister recently tweeted that the housing benefit debate is “misinformed” by claims the budget is being cut, when spending is in fact forecast to resume its upward trend after next year’s cuts have bitten.
This may be a deeply disingenuous argument – the Minister knows full well that the amounts paid out to individual households are falling – but it does highlight an important point: despite a £2 billion package of cuts the overall housing benefit budget will … Read more
Too often reflections on our disparate housing market focus on a crude north-south divide, of rocketing house prices in the south, and decline in the north. Just a couple of weeks ago Shelter was campaigning in Liverpool, and our campaigns team heard from hundreds of the city’s residents just how awful their housing situation is. IPPR’s report on housing in Bradford shows just how complex a city’s housing can be, and we are pleased to feature a guest blog … Read more
One of the Welfare Reform Act’s intentions, and one Shelter was happy to support, was a pledge to simplify the benefits system. In light of this it is surprising that one particular measure was allowed to survive the bill unscathed, despite being overturned twice by the Lords.
The Act will cut housing benefit for council and housing association tenants if they are judged to be occupying a larger property than they need. The definition of this is incredibly strict … Read more
Yesterday’s homelessness statistics have confirmed what Shelter’s advisers have reported – more and more people are approaching their council for assistance because they can’t find anywhere affordable to live. Nationwide, the number of households accepted as entitled to assistance increased by 18 per cent last quarter compared to the same time the previous year. London has seen the sharpest increase in homelessness: a 36 per cent rise. But as this handy Guardian map shows it isn’t the only homelessness … Read more
Today the Welfare Reform Bill receives Royal Assent, almost 21 months since its measures were announced in the June 2010 Emergency Budget. Throughout, our top priority has been to ensure that housing benefit retained a link to the rents people actually pay. The power itself was buried in the middle of the bill as an opaque clause that gave the Secretary of State sweeping powers to change the way housing benefit is calculated.
Currently Local Housing Allowance – the housing … Read more
There’s a lot of neo-Victorianism around housing at the moment. It’s not just the Dickens bicentenary – although that has encouraged just about everyone to lever cheap literary references into the most improbable places.
The latest Survey of English Housing confirms that housing is trending towards the Victorian situation of more private renting and less homeownership. More and more families are now raising children in privately rented homes – something which almost died out in the late twentieth century. … Read more
The Welfare Reform Bill finally broke its parliamentary impasse this week, as peers failed to wrestle additional concessions out of the Government to protect tenants in social housing. Of all bills this parliamentary session, only those to enact fixed term parliaments and radically re-shape constituencies have caused more dispute; proof of both parliament’s love of introspection and the extent of opposition created by the bill.
The bill is one of the Government’s flagship pieces of legislation and the public – … Read more