Third Of Tenants Face Underoccupancy Cut

Cutting housing benefit for working-age tenants who underoccupy their homes will affect around a third of those living in social housing, the government has revealed.

An impact assessment from the Department for Work and Pensions estimates that limiting housing benefit payments to the number of bedrooms that a social tenant actually needs will affect 670,000 people living in social housing.


















The report, released yesterday as part of the government’s Welfare Reform Bill, says most tenants only underoccupy by one bedroom, and will lose around £11 a week in 2013/14, when the change comes into play.

Those with two or more bedrooms that they do not use will lose an average of £20 per week, the assessment says. It also found that tenants in the north, east midlands and Wales were more likely to be affected than those living in London and the south east.

Around 46 per cent of social tenants in the north east will see their housing benefit cut by around £12 a week, while only 19 per cent of London tenants will be affected.

The National Housing Federation condemned the plans. David Orr, chief executive, said: ‘Ministers have long promised to protect the vulnerable and yet these plans could force thousands of people to move out of homes they have lived in for many years.

‘As a result of these changes, thousands of couples are no longer able to offer their grown-up children a room to stay in should their circumstances change, and many single parents will be pushed away from friends, relatives and support networks.’

Under occupancy penalty could force struggling families into hands of loan shark.

Plans to slash housing benefit for hundreds of thousands of low income families could lead to a huge surge in the number of people turning to loan sharks and doorstep lenders as they struggle to pay their bills, campaigners warned today.

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.

The DWP has suggested that households seeing their benefit reduced - by 13% for those with one 'spare' room and 23% 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.

Each claimant is expected to lose an average of £676 a year if the Government succeeds in introducing the measure in 2013. Tenants will face a tough choice of either downsizing to a smaller home to avoid the penalty or staying put and paying a much higher level of rent from their own resources.

But even for those who do look to downsize there is by no means any guarantee they will find a smaller social home to move into. Around 180,000 social tenants in England are 'under-occupying' two-bedroom homes, but just 68,000 one bedroom social homes became available for letting in a single year (2009/10).

The average social housing household in receipt of housing benefit has an annual income of just £8,320 a year. The proposed 'under occupation' penalty will leave vulnerable families with a shortfall of £676 to make up from their savings or other allowances. Many are at risk of falling into debt because they simply would not have the money to pay all their bills.

Currently, around 2.5m people borrow from doorstep lenders at rates often in the region of 272% APR for new customers. A further 200,000 are estimated to borrow from loan sharks, who can charge anything up to 2,000% APR. A majority of those financially excluded are social housing tenants.

If a tenant took out a £700 loan to cover the under occupation penalty with the doorstep lender Provident, they would pay an APR of 272.2% on the loan, according to a typical example given on their website. That would mean repaying £1,274 back over the course of a year. For people going to illegal loan sharks the rate could be ten times as much.

Federation chief executive David Orr said: "The Government's plans to penalise hundreds of thousands of low income families who are adjudged to be 'under occupying' their property is harsh and regressive.

"In the vast majority of cases, people will simply not be able to make up the shortfall themselves and could end up being sucked into poverty and spiralling levels of debt.

"The Government has repeatedly said that it will look after the most vulnerable, but pushing thousands of people into the arms of doorstep lenders and illegal loan sharks is wrong and will lead to a huge degree anxiety for many of the poorest in our society."

Niall Cooper, National Coordinator of Church Action on Poverty said: "There is a real danger that people will be pushed into the hands of loan sharks by the housing benefit cuts.

"Many tenants are already struggling to make ends meet, and can ill afford the cost of borrowing from high cost lenders who routinely charge anywhere between 200%-2,000% APR for loans.

"For some, this will push them over the edge - into a spiral of debt, or even homelessness."

UK Lags Behind In Child-Parent Wellbeing, Says Unicef

Children and parents in two contrasting European countries, Sweden and Spain, have significantly higher levels of wellbeing than those in a third, the United Kingdom, according to a survey and research by Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund.


















The survey examined attitudes towards materialism and inequality and found that parents and children had markedly different attitudes towards material possessions.

It was carried out among some 250 children, ranging in age from eight to 13, from all social backgrounds in the three countries. The findings were further discussed in three steering groups, one each in England, Spain and Sweden, of 14-year-olds. Twenty four families in the three countries were also observed and filmed.

“The message from them all was simple, clear and unanimous,” according to the Unicef report, “their wellbeing centres on time with a happy, stable family, having good friends and plenty of things to do, especially outdoors.”

Given the links, in terms of history, cultural and social policy thinking, between Ireland and the UK, the survey is likely to be of interest in Ireland, in particular to social workers, childcare specialists and policy analysts.

“Family life in the three countries was strikingly different,” says the report. It identified pressure on parental time in the UK, linked to long hours and both parents working outside the home, as having an impact on children, with parents trying to “make up” by buying things for their children.

“In the UK homes, we found parents struggling to give children the time they clearly want to spend with them whilst in Spain and Sweden family time appeared to be woven into the fabric of everyday life. We also noticed that the roles played by mothers, fathers and children within the family and the rules which governed family life were much more clearly defined in Spain and Sweden than in the UK.

“Moreover by the time many British children had reached secondary school, their participation in active and creative pursuits – pursuits that children said made them happy – had in fact dwindled, whilst this occurred less in other countries . . .

“Behind the statistics, we found British families struggling, pushed to find the time their children want, something exacerbated by the uncertainty about the rules and roles operating within the family household. And we found less participation in outdoor and creative activities amongst older and more deprived children.”

On materialism, the survey found that British children and parents both had problems.

For the majority of eight- to 13-year-olds in all three countries, “new toys, fashion items and gadgets were not central to their wellbeing”.

“Rather than wanting to acquire things for their own sake, material objects and consumer goods tended to fulfil a range of purposes in children’s lives: utilitarian, symbolic and social,” says the report.

“However, whilst most children agreed that family time is more important than consumer goods, we observed within UK homes a compulsion on the part of some parents to continually buy new things both for themselves and their children . . .

“We also noticed that UK parents were often buying their children status brands believing that they were protecting them from the kind of bullying they experienced in their own childhood.

“This compulsive acquisition and protective, symbolic brand purchase was largely absent in Spain and Sweden where parents were clearly under much less pressure to consume and displayed greater resilience.”

On inequality, in the UK this tended to be defined in terms of money and material possessions.

“Whilst the links between brands and inequality created tensions and anxieties for children in all three countries to some extent, these feelings were only shared by UK parents. Swedish and Spanish parents seemed not to belong to a “consumer generation” in the same way.

“Deprivation for Swedish parents was understood as living in an area where personal safety was threatened, whilst for Spanish mothers not being able to spend time with your children was seen to confer disadvantage relative to others.

“In the UK, inequality was also seen in access to outdoor, sporting and creative activities, with poorer children spending more sedentary time in front of screens whilst the more affluent had access to a wide range of sports and other pursuits.”

Children’s Well-being in the UK, Sweden and Spain: the Role of Inequality and Materialism (Unicef; June 2011) is a qualitative study and may be read online in full at unicef.org.uk/Latest/News/

Suicide Pact Duo Died Weeks After Meeting Online, Inquest Hears

Young teacher Jenny Spain and Mark Searle, 37, found dead together in car in Buckinghamshire.










Relatives of a young teacher who died in an internet suicide pact wept as they heard she was found "cradled" in the lap of a stranger.

The bodies of Jenny Spain, 23, and Mark Searle, 37, were discovered inside a car on a country lane near the village of Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire weeks after they met online.












The fume-filled car in Braintree, Essex, where the bodies of Stephen Lumb and Joanne Lee were found last September.

An inquest heard the pair researched their deaths before driving to the remote spot where they were found in a Ford Ka.

Police later uncovered an internet trail and a series of text messages between Spain, from Deptford, south London, and Searle, from Hailsham, East Sussex.

It revealed they had planned their deaths on 22 February, High Wycombe magistrates court in Buckinghamshire heard.

The hour-long hearing was told that the pair had been "complete strangers living a considerable distance from each other".

Detective Constable Gareth Nicholson, of Thames Valley police, said they originally made contact on 2 February after meeting on an internet forum.

While high-achiever Spain had a history of depression and self-harm, Searle, a nurse, suffered from bipolar disorder, the inquest was told.

In a matter of weeks, they agreed to end their lives together, discussing their plans using instant messages and on one occasion meeting in London.

Late on 21 February or early the next morning, they set off for Buckinghamshire – an area neither knew well.

In a written statement read to the court, a woman said she stumbled upon the scene while walking her dog.

Judy Thompson said she spotted the car parked at the side of the road. Two bodies were in the back and the driver's seat had been pushed forward.

"I saw something on the male's lap as though he was cradling something," she said. "I immediately thought it was a child but quite quickly I realised it was another person, an adult, slumped across the male's lap."

When emergency crews arrived, the surrounding area was sealed, with roads up to half a mile away cordoned off.

Fighting back tears, Searle's wife, Emma Sandalls, told how they met in London on the morning of his death. Her husband, who had suffered from suicidal thoughts since they met, never returned home.

Though the couple had been in the process of relocating to a new home at the time of Searle's death, there was "nothing untoward going on other than the usual stresses of moving house", Sandalls said.

"I knew he had suicidal thoughts and he did find an outlet for that online," she added. "I viewed it as a support network for dealing with his thoughts."

Spain's father, Christopher said his daughter, who had a first-class degree, suffered from depression and self-harm. But he added that family members had no idea she was about to end her life, agreeing that her death had come as a "dreadful shock".

"She used the internet but she kept it to herself," he said.

The Buckinghamshire coroner Richard Hulett told the court that, following the deaths, he had been able to access information on their chosen suicide method online "within about three minutes" using Google.

"The evidence is plain," he said. "It seems the two individuals, both of whom have a degree or background of depression and suicidal thoughts or self-harm, came to know each other rather, by my mind, morbidly, on a site that is dedicated to people who are interested in things related to suicide.

"The method was decided upon and the parties, with more or less equal apprehension and determination, decided upon this course of action.

"What they were doing was pretty much invisible to both their families, all families, and those who were immediate and close to them."

Recording verdicts of suicide, he added: "There was a clear decision and determination to take this course of action which could only result in the death of both of them. With this in mind, I need to return two verdicts that each individual took their own life."

The Benefit Trap: Working Families Feel The Squeeze

Iain Duncan Smith's tax and benefits reforms are hitting the most vulnerable in society, say leading think tanks, and threaten to undermine any notion that work pays.









Low income families are becoming worse off and the prospect of work less attractive as government reforms of tax and benefits systems aimed at encouraging people back to work take effect.

The warning comes in the wake of a series of reports from respected think tanks that have analysed the impact of the reforms being led by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Their findings reveal that an urgent rethink is needed, highlighting problems in the interaction of income tax and tax credits with other benefits.

‘Cuts to childcare tax credits could leave some parents losing 94p for every extra pound they earn,’ according to a report from the Resolution Foundation. It cites the example of a single mother on the minimum wage who would be just £3 a week better off if she decided to work four days a week rather than three.

Lone parents, 92% of whom are women, are worst hit by cuts, losing 8.5% of their annual income by 2015, according to The Fawcett Society. Its analysis was based on research undertaken by the highly regarded Institute for Fiscal Studies using the government's own models.

‘The government talks a lot about promoting responsibility and backing aspiration, but on the ground these cuts are actually stopping single parents from getting on,’ says Fiona Weir, chief executive of Gingerbread that represents lone parents.

‘It is unacceptable that single parents are bearing the brunt of cuts and this research proves again that the government must do more to support single parents, including further investment in childcare, training and employment support.’
Childcare costs

In the past, parents have been able to claim back up to 80% of childcare costs up to £300 a week, depending on income. For a family with two children or more this works out at a maximum of £240 a week. But since April the proportion these costs a parent can claim back has been reduced to 70 per cent and capped at £210 a week – a loss of £30 a week.

The Resolution Report calculates that almost 500,000 working families have lost an average of £426 a year in childcare benefit since April of this year, rising to an average of £600 a year in London, with some as much as £1,300 a year worse off.

According to the Daycare Trust’s 2011 annual survey of child care costs, the average yearly expenditure for 25 hours nursery care per week for a child under two is £5,028 in England, £5,178 in Scotland and £4,723 in Wales. This works out at around £96 a week on average.

But for parents working from 8.30am to 5.30pm childcare costs are nearly double at £172 a week, with some parents paying as much as £11 an hour for child care.

Leaked Letter Reveals Tory Welfare Reform Madness: 40,000 More Homeless Families, And An Increase In Cost

Britain’s incompetent coalition government has just hit a new low. In a leaked letter to David Cameron from the office of Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the ruinous impact of the government’s decision to cap benefits at £500 a week per family (essentially capping housing benefit at £400 a week) is exposed.














Pickles, via his private secretary Nico Heslop, told the Prime Minister in no uncertain terms that 40,000 families will be made homeless by the government’s savage welfare reforms, and that the estimated £270m saving from the benefits cap “will be wiped out by the need to divert resources to help the newly homeless and is likely to ‘generate a net cost,’” as the Guardian explained.

The limit on housing benefit was a key plank of Cameron’s manipulation of the electorate last year, with the unemployed portrayed as workshy scroungers, and housing benefit portrayed as something that is a result of their greed, rather than of landlords setting rents that are either unnecessarily high or an unfortunate response to an overheated property market.

The proposals alarmed those involved in housing and welfare, although in polls the public decided to support Cameron and his vile politics of envy, in which he pushed the notion that it was unacceptable for the unemployed to live in houses that those in work were unable to afford.

I lamented all of these developments in my articles last year, Critics Attack UK Government’s Cruel and Ill-Conceived Assault on Welfare and On Housing Benefit Cuts, British Public Reveals Shocking Lack of Empathy and Compassion, in which I also noted that, according to independent research commissioned by Shelter from the Cambridge Centre for Housing & Planning Research at the University of Cambridge, an estimated 134,000 households “will either be evicted or forced to move when the cuts come in next year as they will be unable to negotiate cheaper rents.”

Shelter also noted, “Of these, an estimated 35,000 households will approach their local authorities for housing assistance, and where councils have a legal duty to help they will face costs of up to £120 million a year providing temporary accommodation such as hostels or bed and breakfasts,” adding that these costs “would cancel out a fifth of the £600 million the Treasury has said it will save from the cuts in 2012, the first full year they are in force.”

Eric Pickles’ intervention provides different figures, but the impact is, if anything, even more damaging, as his letter suggests that these changes, impacting on 40,000 families and creating, in London, what Boris Johnson appropriately criticised as “Kosovo-style social cleansing, ” will not save any money at all, and will actually end up costing more that leaving all these people where they are.

There is more in Eric Pickles’ thoroughly alarming letter — an acknowledgment that “We are already seeing increased pressures on homelessness services,” that local authorities “will have to calculate and administer reduced Housing Benefit to keep within the cap,” and that plans to build 56,000 new, “affordable” homes will, as a result, be savaged. Involving a distressing proposal to oblige or allow social housing landlords to charge rents at 80 percent of market rents, the success of this venture depends, in Pickles’ view, on the availability of housing benefit, whereas the cap will, he estimates, lead to 40 percent of the new homes not being built at all.

Pickles’ letter also highlights a particularly cruel benefit-cutting proposal, warning of a PR disaster were it to be implemented. “I understand that there may be a suggestion around requiring families to divert a percentage of their non-housing (benefit) income to cover housing costs,” he writes, adding, “It is important not to underestimate the level of controversy that this would generate (likely to dwarf anything already seen on the HB only caps) and the difficulty of justifying this in policy terms as well as implementation.”

That really ought to tell you all you need to know — that the Prime Minister and his advisers, as well as happily making at least 40,000 people homeless, and striving to eradicate social housing as a valid form of not-for-profit housing, also propose forcing poor families to use the money provided for their living costs (and, for example, child benefit) to be taken away from them to subsidise their rents.

This, of course, is a sign of the essential meanness of spirit of this particular pair of privileged Etonians and their colleagues (including their Lib Dem stooges), as they work out how to kick the poor as savagely as possible, but it is not the only problem, of course. As with almost every aspect of the government’s proposed cuts — and as Eric Pickles pointed out so significantly — the sums don’t even add up. As a result, the welfare reforms join a list of costing disasters that show up the PM and his Chancellor George Osborne as the most incompetent political double-act in living memory, so driven by an ideological desire to destroy the British state that they can’t even make a valid economic case for their reforms.

Think of the savage “reform” of university funding, in which, having eradicated state support for arts, humanities and social science degrees, and having scrapped the fee limit of £3290 a year, the government had the nerve to complain when universities largely decided to charge fees of £9000 a year. Most universities need to do this simply to survive, as it costs more than £9000 a year to teach a student, but the government never thought about this, and is now whingeing about how much it will all cost.

Think of the brutal cuts to legal aid, which are supposed to save £350 million, but will leave ordinary people with almost no ability to seek legal assistance in cases involving debt, employment, housing, family law and criminal negligence. This appears to be a huge financial saving, but as legal experts have warned, and as Zoe Wiliiams explained in a Guardian article on June 22, “This might be a cut, but it isn’t a saving. It will cost us a fortune.” Back in February, judges warned that “a massive increase in ‘litigants in person’ — ordinary people appearing in court without a lawyer — will slow down the court system and may cost more money down the line,” as the Guardian explained. The judges’ council, chaired by head of the judiciary, Lord Igor Judge, stated, “The proposals would lead to a huge increase in the incidence of unrepresented litigants, with serious implications for the quality of justice … at a time when courts are having to cope in any event with closures, budgetary cut-backs and reductions in staff numbers. There is a real question whether the cost savings arising from the proposed cutbacks in the scope of civil and family legal aid would be offset by the additional costs imposed on the system by dealing with the increase in litigants in person.”

The Law Society has launched a campaign against the proposed cuts, establishing a website, Sound Off for Justice, describing its own proposals for saving £384 million “while still protecting access to justice.” The Law Society explains, “Our savings protect the continued provision of legal aid for the neediest in society, while the MoJ proposals would remove the right to legal aid that supported the families affected by the Hillsborough disaster, the Thalidomide scandal, and the Clapham rail crash.”

Think also of the planned privatization by stealth of the NHS. Resistance to the reality of the plans, revealed through the legally enforceable obligation for competition in every aspect of the NHS, has been rigorous, and critics have pointed out how throughly disastrous the government’s plans would be for huge swathes of the NHS in which enforced competition is entirely inappropriate. The government now claims to be revising its plans, but ministers cannot be trusted until the entire bill has been scrapped, because the main reason for the reforms is the ongoing privatisation of the NHS. This can only cost more and result in worse healthcare, because corporate interests don’t have a social conscience, and are designed solely to maximise profits at all costs.
32 years after Margaret Thatcher began the destruction of British society, we need a new way of thinking, which no one in the mainstream appears able to provide. Cameron and Osborne may be spectacular examples of arrogance, stupidity and callousness, but they’re also, essentially, just tinkering with the broken template provided by Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, which failed so abysmally with the financial crash of 2008, but whose true impact remains unacknowledged.