The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) intends to use the Welfare Reform Bill to slash housing benefit for tenants living in homes deemed too large for their needs - even if they have lived there for decades. The measure will hit 670,000 council and housing association tenants - a third of all working-age housing benefit claimants in the social rented sector across Great Britain. Each claimant is expected to lose an average of £13 a week if the Government succeeds in introducing the measure in 2013. The DWP has suggested that households seeing their benefit reduced - by up to 15% for those with one 'spare' room and up to 25% for two or more 'spare' rooms - should 'move to accommodation which better reflects the size and composition of their household' - or make up the shortfall from other income sources. But National Housing Federation research shows that while about 180,000 social tenants in England are 'under-occupying' two-bedroom homes, and will therefore come under pressure to downsize to one-beds, just 68,000 one-bed social homes became available for letting in a single year (2009/10).
Read more on the NHF website.
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