Shocked staff at a Fife centre looked on in horror as a man said to be desperate for help over the ‘bedroom tax’ pulled out a knife and tried to cut himself.
According to one person, who asked not to be named, the apparent suicide bid ended in “blood everywhere — all over the walls and counters”.
A United Nations representative is to take part in a meeting to hear how the bedroom tax is affecting the UK's social housing tenants.
Raquel Rolnik, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, will hear from groups from all over Britain at the Anti-Bedroom Tax and Benefit Justice Federation meeting in Manchester next week.
About 25 people made their voices heard in Plymouth at the sleepout protest. Activists camped outside the Civic Centre on Saturday night to spread their message.
"Over 700 residents of Plymouth have already applied to downsize their home, as a means to escape the bedroom tax that they cannot afford.
Anti-bedroom tax campaigners across the country will take part in a mass sleep out tomorrow night.
The sleep out is taking place in over 50 towns and cities across the UK in a bid to raise awareness about the government's controversial under-occupancy policy.
Liberal Democrat grassroot supporters are planning a revolt against the coalition’s controversial bedroom tax.
Activists have tabled a motion for next month’s party conference to demand a review of the policy, the Daily Mirror reported.
The Labour Party is set to lay into the government's expansive reforms of the benefits system later today.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne will claim that taxpayers are on course to lose £1.4 billion by 2015 as a result of the changes.
Over half (51%) of renters in the private sector have had bad experiences of letting agents and landlords, a new survey has revealed.
According to The Tenants' Voice, an online resource for people in rented accommodation, 37% of renters wouldn't rent another property from their current landlord or agent.
Statistics published by the Department of Work and Pensions today announced that the number of people claiming housing benefit as of May 2013 was 5,072,264. The number claiming the benefit in April was 5,062,172, meaning there were 10,092 new claimants over the period of a month.
Year on year, housing benefit claims rose by 40,526, as in May 2012 the number of people claiming was 5,031,738.
Social landlords are raising their rents for benefit tenants above those charged by private landlords. The difference is a gap of 14%, says new data.
Produced by the organisers of the annual Resi conference, they say it has been extrapolated from the Government’s own figures and shows that contrary to widespread condemnation, private landlords who take tenants on Local Housing Allowance are not the ones pushing up the housing benefits bill.
The vast majority of social housing tenants affected by the bedroom tax have no smaller properties available to them to downsize to.
Freedom of Information requests of local authorities by the Labour Party found that 96% of people hit by the government's controversial under-occupancy policy are effectively trapped in their current homes because of a countrywide lack of smaller accommodation.
A landlord who pleaded guilty to a total of 75 Housing Act offences has been ordered to pay nearly £40,000.
In terms of numbers of offences, it was the largest prosecution in the history of the local authority concerned, Redbridge Council in Greater London.