Bristol Mayor George Ferguson will today be urged to continue with a "no evictions" policy over council tenants who fall into arrears because of the so-called "bedroom tax".
Tenants lose £12.70 a week in housing benefit if they are judged to have one bedroom more than they need or £23.90 a week if they have two bedrooms too many.
THE “bedroom tax” is costing millions of pounds more to implement in Scotland than it will save, the country’s council leaders have revealed.
Local government body Cosla claims the policy will cost about £58-60 million this year, which outweighs the estimated savings of £50m on the benefits bill.
LABOUR has been accused of "rank hypocrisy" after 47 of its MPs failed to vote on its key Westminster motion, demanding the so-called bedroom tax be scrapped immediately.
Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, Anas Sarwar, the deputy Scottish Labour leader, Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Jim Murphy, the Shadow International Development Secretary, were among 10 of the party's Scots MPs who did not vote.
Ahead of an Opposition Day Debate in the House of Commons, charity Citizens Advice has warned that changes to Housing Benefit are “simply creating more problems”.
The Housing Benefit reform, which came into effect in April this year, is aiming to cut costs by restricting the size of accommodation a family can receive Housing Benefit for.
Housing associations say change to benefit rules means tenants cannot afford to rent three-bed maisonettes.
Three-bedroom homes are being condemned to demolition by housing associations because the coalition's bedroom tax has made them too expensive for tenants to live in, the Observer can reveal.
NEARLY 200 people have signed a petition calling for the ‘bedroom tax’ to be scrapped – with protestors urging Councils to debate the issue.
Last Thursday, an organised protest group set up in Angel Place to ask passers-by if they would add their support to the campaign.
Seven months after the introduction of the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ two thirds of council house tenants affected are behind with rent, a Freedom of Information request has found.
Rent arrears have risen by £693,202 to £4,182,026 since the welfare reform’s introduction in April. It cuts housing benefit by an average £14 per week to council and housing association tenants deemed to have ‘spare’ bedrooms.
The UK's housing system is in crisis due to a lack of housing stock. Shelter estimates that there is a need for 250.000 new homes to be build per year and that is just for England alone. It is pretty much universally accepted that successive governments did not find building homes politically-attractive and, due to the short-sighted ineptitude, there are simply not enough homes especially in the social sector.
So how does the Tory-led government tackle the housing shortage crisis? Do they listen to housing and business experts and build more homes? No, they ignored these experts. Their solution to the housing shortage crisis is to manipulate the benefits system so that tenants on a low incomes pay for the housing crisis via cuts to Housing Benefit.
A cash package worth nearly £400,000 has landed in council coffers to help those affected by the ‘bedroom tax’.
The news was welcomed by Linlithgow MSP Fiona Hyslop who called the measure an “unfair tax”.
The government's benefit cap will struggle to meet its aims of encouraging people into work and saving taxpayers' money, a report suggests.
The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) looked at the London borough of Haringey, one of four pilot areas.