Bedroom Tax Impact on Grant Allocations

Housing providers have warned that the government is ‘storing up future problems’ because more than three-quarters of its grant funding programme will be used for the development of one and two-bedroom homes. Of the 62,000 homes to be developed with the 2015-18 affordable housing grant allocation, 77% will be one and two-bedroom properties after the government requested that providers focus on smaller-sized properties. The allocation has been widely interpreted as a reaction to under-occupying tenants needing to downsize to avoid the bedroom tax. Housing providers told Inside Housing that civil servants from the CLG had contacted them to scrutinise why they had included bids for funding to build family-sized homes. Read more on Inside Housing.