Bedroom Tax – It Ain’t What Ya Say It’s The Way That Ya Say It!

On Tuesday (12 March) Iain Duncan Smith released a written statement which says:

    “People who are approved foster carers will be allowed an additional room, whether or not a child has been placed with them or they are between placements, so long as they have fostered a child, or become an approved foster carer in the last twelve months.”

So, the statement confirms that the bedroom tax exemption for foster carers ONLY applies to existing foster carers and not to new ones! So when is a concession not a concession? And how have foster carers just lost £1.35m per year? You will recall that an additional £30m of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) was found when the bedroom tax began to raise its ugly head right across the media.  David Cameron said this at PMQs and the £30m was £25m for (all) disabled people and £5m for foster carers. By exempting 5,000 foster carers at an average of £14 pw in bedroom tax we see the budget being £3.65m for existing foster carers and nothing for any potential new foster carers.

Last week Manchester City Council produced a policy on DHPs which said it would prioritise foster carers as it would cost MCC more in spot foster payments for foster carers out of their own social services budgets. Yet now everyone will errantly believe all foster carers are exempt so councils won’t prioritise them at all or even consider them for DHPs, which, prior to today’s chicanery they could rightfully expect to be £5m per year.  Now with the exemption they will get £3.65m - potentially £1.35m less!  Read more on the Speye blog.