Finally, the Upper Tribunal decision on room size and the
bedroom tax has been released. And the
upshot? Well, frankly a bit of a mess. The appeals were by the DWP of two FTT
decisions that rooms of 64 square feet and 66.3 square feet were too small to
be classed as bedrooms. As the UT put it, both the FTT decisions found that:
i) under occupancy can be seen as the flip side of
overcrowding
ii) to be a bedroom a room should be large enough to be
appropriate for use as a bedroom by an adult - or by two children, and
iii) had Parliament intended that these long-standing
statutory minimum standards should be disregarded by the Tribunal, the FTT
would have expected that to have been clearly stated in the legislation.
Read more on Nearly Legal.