138,547 ‘Benefit Households’ To Be Refused ‘Social Housing’ Per Year.

Housing associations and council landlords will no longer house many benefit households due to the overall benefit cap – around 138,547 families per year is the approximate and cautiously low number! To explain with those pesky fact called numbers:

·         Social landlords let 384,854 properties according to official figures for 2014/15.

·         English Housing Survey tells us 36% of social housing is 3 bed or larger properties.

·         No social landlord can afford to let a 3 bed property due to the overall benefit cap.

·         Therefore 36% of the yearly 384,854 properties are statistically likely to be 3 bed or larger properties yet will not be let to the benefit household.

·         Ergo, 138,547 of the poorest most vulnerable families, will not get social housing

Read more on the Speye blog.

Tories Kill Sheltered Housing & Landlords Don’t Even Notice!

Sheltered housing is dead due to Conservative housing benefit policy and social landlords haven’t even noticed this cataclysmic change to their business! Housing benefit in the social rented sector will be capped at the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rate is the Conservative policy and the current average 1 bed sheltered housing property has a rent of £136.98 and the 1 bed LHA rate in Liverpool is £90.90 per week. The pensioner would therefore need to top up their rent from their state pension by £46.08 per week which is £2400 per year! The same situation will happen in most of England (though not London) and in Scotland and Wales as this change is a housing benefit policy and therefore GB wide. Read more on the Speye blog.

Pay MORE To Stay – HA’s Cream The Tenant For £473m Per Year (Minimum)

According to the IFS some 250,000 social tenants will have to pay £3000 more in rent each year.  That is £750,000,000 (£750m) per year.  The bedroom tax affects 456,959 social tenant households at an average £792.48 per year or £362 million per year.  So on those simple numbers we see pay MORE to stay being more than twice as bad as the bedroom tax. Once again the social tenant gets shafted by this Conservative government. Yet the housing association landlord benefits as they keep this excess and additional rent charged whereas the excess from council landlord rents goes back to the Government.  So the housing associations benefit financially – and hugely – from this pay MORE to stay policy and are doing the dirty work for and on behalf of Government! Read more on the Speye blog.

Pensioners To Pay MORE To Stay In Social Housing!?

The Conservative’s Housing & Planning Bill includes the policy of pay (MORE) to stay which sees social tenants with a “household income” – a term as yet undefined – of more than £30,000 per year in the regions and £40,000 or more in London to pay market rents or near market rents to stay in social housing. Nowhere in this policy or in the Bill’s drafting does it say the pensioner household is exempt.  In Ealing and using the housing regulators own official figures the pensioner in a 3 bed social rented property will see the rent increase from £136 per week to around £480 per week as a result of this policy. Read more on the Speye blog.

RIPsnorter of a Housing Debate

On 2 November, The Housing and Planning Bill received its second reading in the House of Commons. The Right To Buy extension, while in the Bill, is subject to a “voluntary” deal offered by NHF and so avoids parliamentary scrutiny and, significantly, Greg Clark the Minister stated that this applied to ALL housing associations including those who voted against the deal despite assurances from David Orr saying they would not!  Yet far more important was the announcement on Friday that the ONS had reclassified housing associations as public sector bodies. Healey asked Clark twice as to when he knew about the ONS reclassification – and twice Clark refused to answer. The NHF was stitched up like a kipper and David Orr sold them down the river with his assurances on independence, on the discretion he claimed they would have and on those voting No to his deal would not have to sell their properties. Read more on the Speye blog.

Orr Some Deceits Of NHF Over “Offer!”

David Orr has deceived 1,100 housing association boards and proves this by his own hand in an article in the New Statesman clearly written AFTER the deceits were emailed to all NHF members last week. David Orr and the NHF believe – with astonishing incredulity – that this POTENTIAL ‘offer’ will see the Conservative government agree to the right to buy 

ONLY IF THE HA LANDLORD AGREES! 

What planet is David Orr on? Many HAs north of Birmingham cannot afford to sell and replace as this will cost them tens of thousands for each property due to house prices.  As a result they will not replace even if they ALLOW (ahem!) the sale in the first place.  The Orr ‘ deal’ is THE most surefire way to have housing associations renationalised as public sector landlords. Read more on the Speye blog.

No DHP for Bedroom Tax Households after July 2015

It is highly unlikely any discretionary housing payments (DHP) will be given to bedroom tax cases after July this year. The reason is the inevitable consequence of the reduction in the benefit cap and all local councils will have no choice but to divert DHP to benefit cap cases and away from bedroom tax cases and this also means that the majority of DHP awards will go to the private tenant not the social tenant.  The reduced benefit cap means private landlords will seek to evict all families on benefit firstly and soon to be followed by social landlords having to evict social tenant families. Local councils will simply and inevitably shift DHP payments to benefit cap households and away from bedroom tax households as to do so will save the local councils money in temporary homeless costs. Read more on the Speye blog.

The Benefit Cap Equals 1 MILLION Evicted From Social Housing!

If you are sick, disabled or unemployed and the Tories are not voted out in May you will be evicted and you will have nowhere you can possibly live.  The overall benefit cap proposal will mean you work or are evicted and that applies even if you are sick or disabled and unable to work. It means that a social landlord - which is the cheapest form of housing - is unaffordable to the sick, disabled and unemployed tenant as the social landlord cannot AFFORD to have you as a tenant.It means the sick, the disabled and the unemployed have nowhere to live at all. It means the social housing model of HA and council landlords is dead. Read more on the Speye blog.

Does The Upper Tribunal Say EVERY Bedroom Tax Decision Was Unlawful? Yes!

Is every single bedroom tax decision wrong in law and does every single bedroom tax affected household have legitimate grounds to appeal it? The answer is YES! That is what the Upper Tribunal lead case decision says – I was right all along and that the bedroom tax decision-making process is and always has been an unlawful sham and ALL decision made are official errors or unlawful. EVERY council said we don’t have to define bedroom and it is up to the landlord!  Oh dear as this UT lead case has said they are errors of law and that all decisions made this way are unlawful. Read more on the Speye blog.

Inner To Outer London HB Cleansing Is All There In DWP Figures

HB cleansing from Inner to Outer London characterises the coalition welfare reforms and the figures which prove it are the latest official DWP HB statistics, published a few weeks ago and accounting for a full 4 year period from May 2010 to May 2014. In that time the overall number of HB claimants has increased by 4.93%. Here are the regional increases in HB claimants since the election:

North East 4.93 % : North West : 4.49% : Yorks & Hum 6.43%:  East Mid : 5.36%: West Mid 4.2% :

East : 5.69% : South East 5.81% : South West 6.02% : London (Inner & Outer) 4.93%

Notice how very similar they are and no marked regional differences in England?  Now look what has happened in Inner London and Outer London and note the average increase in Inner London is a mere 0.1% in the HB claimant count yet in Outer London it is 8.55% and way above any other area of England. Read more on the Speye blog.

Housing Benefit under the Coalition

Official Housing Benefit figures from the DWP record the figures up to May 2014 and the first four years under the coalition. Snapshot is:

·         Overall HB bill is now £24.11 billion up from £20.87 billion in May 2010

·         June 2010 coalition says it will reduce HB bill by £2 billion yet it has increased by £3.24 billion meaning the total HB bill is £5.24 billion more per year than the coalition promised the welfare reforms to HB of LHA caps, benefit cap and the bedroom tax would achieve

·         May 2010 cost of Housing Benefit to those in work was £2.90 billion and four years later that cost is now £5.13 billion per year.

Time for a closer look at just how bad these figures are for the coalition and, for once dear reader, we can read some FACT about Housing Benefit from the DWP’s own hand. Let’s start with the 3 points above. The overall bill -

·         The figures show that there are 4,985,741 HB claimants.

·         The figures show that the average each receive is £92.69 per week

·         Simple multiplication reveals the total HB cost is at May 2014 £24, 113, 196,250 or £24.11 billion

Read more on the Speye blog.

The Bedroom Tax DHP Postcode Lottery

If you live in Copeland you have a 6% chance of getting a bedroom tax DHP: Yet if you live in Westminster it is a 169% chance! Here is the maths bit.

·         The DWP release Housing Benefit statistics which shows at February 2014 there were 914 bedroom tax households each losing £21.71 per week on average in Westminster.

·         Yearly this is £1,132.79 per household and with 914 households gives a total bedroom tax cut in Westminster of £1,035,376 per year.

·         The DWP also released the HB circular S1/2014 which details how much each local authority gets per year in total DHP and Westminster received £4,821,711 for 2014/15 in DHP of which just over 36% at £1.75m (yes more than the total bedroom tax) was given.

·         Of this £165m total DHP to all councils the DHP has given £60m of this for bedroom tax or just over 36% of all DHP is allocated to councils to pay for bedroom tax.

Read more on the Speye blog.

Affordable Rent and the Bedroom Tax Revisited

An article on Speye in October 2013 argued that the Affordable Rent model (AR)-  in which social landlords can charge up to 80% of private rent levels - gives them an incentive to evict the bedroom tax tenant.  9 months later figures have emerged which reveal that some 38,000 or so AR properties came online in 2012/13, the year before the bedroom tax, and gave social landlords an additional yearly rental income of about £93m. A week or so ago the DWP report into the bedroom tax was published and my immediate comments on that were social landlords arrears had increased by £140m in 2013/14 – the first year of the bedroom tax. There are no confirmed figures yet for how many AR units came online in 2013/14 with social landlords but even if we assume zero we see that social landlords have had two year (2012/23 and 2013/14) of circa £93m per year additional income, that is £186m in additional income to set against the £140m reduced income from bedroom tax arrears! Read more on the Speye blog.

Social Housing and Branding – Never Knowingly Sold Anyone?

Social housing provides the best quality rented housing option over the PRS, the best quality service and the best price and is hugely in demand (waiting lists) YET bizarrely it is portrayed as the housing of last resort and vilified.  In no other industry would the best product and best service all at the best price have such a woeful reputation. In no other industry would it be ALLOWED to happen…Yet that is what HAS happened to the social housing model – and regrettably the people who have allowed that to happen are the people who work within social housing and because they have never SOLD social housing. Social housing has NEVER BEEN SOLD let alone undersold.  There is also not one single body or agency to do this as CIH does not do this, NHF look after the 60% of social landlords who are HAs and a myriad of others lobby for parts of social housing; EROSH for sheltered housing, SITRA et al for supported housing and Shelter and Crisis and Homeless Link etc for homelessness. Read more on the Speye blog.

Lies, Damn Lies and Failing DWP Bedroom Tax Reports

On the same day as the cabinet reshuffle the DWP released a 163-page interim report into the bedroom tax.  Unfortunately this deliberate burial of a report is the best that can be said for it as it really is that bad. It only records the first 5 months of the bedroom tax from April 2013 to August 2013 and so this report is already ELEVEN MONTHS OUT OF DATE. Let’s begin with the Executive Summary which starts on page 13.

This Interim Report presents early findings from the evaluation of the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS). A final report will be published in 2015.

We have already been told by Steve Webb, then a minister at DWP, that the final report will be published in Summer 2015, that is AFTER the next general election.  Hence this sham of a report is to be the ONLY coalition report on the bedroom tax in this parliament which you would not know from reading this cleverly worded sentence. Read more on the Speye blog.

Freud Deliberately Misleads House of Lords Over Bedroom Tax…Again!

Did you know – according to the ignoble Lord Freud – that:

·         200,000 1 bed properties become available in social housing each year

·         There have been “a matter of more than 100 FTT (bedroom tax) appeals.”

That is what he told the House of Lords and he is yet again being totally disingenuous.

1)  200,000 one bed SRS properties each year?

The actual and universally accepted figure is 68,000 not 200,000 and so we see Lord Freud tripling the amount of the real figure as is his want.

2) “…a matter of more than 100 FTT appeals?”

Having personal knowledge of over 80 bedroom tax appeals myself just from one small part of Merseyside alone and further knowledge, some first-hand and some second-hand of a further few hundred bedroom tax appeals in Merseyside and hundreds more across the UK we again see Lord Freud knowingly misleading the House of Lords yet again. Read more on the Speye blog.

Universal Credit’s Disastrous Figures for Social Landlords and Social Housing

Recently, there was an article in the Independent about the first year of Universal Credit in Warrington entitled Universal Credit isn’t working. The reason I am commenting here is that I suspect THE major issue has been missed although stated in the article – the cost to landlords of about £1300 per tenant per year. Yes I did say £1300 per tenant per year!…oUCh! oUCh! oUCh!

Peter Fitzhenry Director of Golden Gates Housing  was rightfully scathing over the policy and the article featured:-

Payments have been so haphazard that 92 per cent of those on Golden Gate’s books using the new benefit are in rent arrears, and two have been evicted since moving on to it.

Because of the small scale of the pilot, only 40 of Golden Gate’s 8,700 tenants are on universal credit, but the housing trust has had to dedicate two full-time staff to chasing DWP payments for those on it. Whoa!….40 tenants on UC  yet the landlord has needed to take on TWO ADDITIONAL FULL TIME MEMBERS OF STAFF TO DEAL WITH THIS. Read more on the Speye blog.

The Truth about the Bedroom Tax. It Costs the Taxpayer MORE

Here is how the bedroom tax costs the taxpayer in just one case the princely sum of £7,398.92 per year more in Housing Benefit. The HB bill for one social tenant who downsized from a social housing 2 bed to a social housing 1 bed increases from £5,384.83 per year to £12,783.75 per year. This social housing tenant would have received £103.20 per week in HB in the £120 per week 2 bed social housing property after the 14% bedroom tax deduction was applied.  Yet she downsized to a 1 bed “affordable rent” (sic) social housing property with a rent of £245 per week all of which is payable in Housing Benefit as there is no bedroom tax and because the misnamed affordable rent property attracts 100% in HB. Read more on the Speye blog.

Bedroom Tax & Room Size

Every bedroom for bedroom tax purposes needs to have 110 square feet of floor space – that is what the HB regulations say!! The room size arguments have gone on and on in the bedroom tax and the Fife and other first tier tribunal decisions say bedroom needs to be 70 square feet and this is based on the reading across of legislation in the HA1985 and the HA2004.  A fierce argument has raged over whether HB decisions can or should have to read legislation as a consideration in the decision or not. The arguments are  irrelevant, the HB Regulations presuppose a bedroom needs to be 110 square feet!  Regulation B13(5) to be precise and that is a regulation we all know.  It says what classes of person(s) is allowed a bedroom with one allocated for children of different sexes if one aged over ten, a bedroom for two teenage children up to 16 if both of the same sex and a bedroom for a couple. Read more on the Speye blog.

5000 Pre1996 Cases DWP – Hahahahaha!

DWP estimate no more than 5,000 pre 1996 exemption cases.  I estimate 40,000 - a big difference. Merseyside has 5 councils, each of whom have stock transferred organisations running the former council housing.  I have preliminary figures from two of these in St Helens and Wirral which total over 900 cases and both equate to around 15% of bedroom tax cases in their respective LA areas.  Merseyside has 24,286 confirmed cases of bedroom tax according to latest DWP figures and so if this 15% is replicated across the 5 councils it would be 3,625 pre 1996 cases in Merseyside alone. Anyone think the DWP estimate of 5000 total case for Merseyside’s 5 councils PLUS another 340 or so local councils is a good one? Read more on the Speye blog.