Figures used by the government to claim private landlords are driving up housing benefit bills came from a property website, it has emerged. During a debate on housing benefit reform in Parliament, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said data from the Office for National Statistics showed private rents were falling at a time when local housing allowance rates were climbing. Mr Duncan Smith said Labour ‘ended up allowing LHA to rocket to provide landlords with excess amounts of money for providing housing that would have cost less’. He said: ‘What we want to do, by working with councils, is to drive those rents back down. The purpose of these changes is to give a real impetus to getting the rents down to make affordable housing more available in some areas. ’However the Department for Work and Pensions has now said the figures came from website findaproperty.com, rather than the official source. Read more on Inside Housing.
1 comment:
rent prices need to definately be moderated, they should coincide with a fixed area fee based on a the type of house and the utilities you get with it. sometimes you can be ripped off without knowing it.
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