Housing associations have urged the chancellor not to announce further welfare cuts when he delivers his autumn statement next month.
In a submission issued ahead of the 5 December announcement, umbrella body the National Housing Federation calls on George Osborne to reject further welfare cuts and ensure a ‘common-sense approach’ is taken with existing reforms due to come in next year.
Tenants saw private rents rise by 0.4% in October pushing the average rent across England and Wales to a new record high of £744 per month.
The latest increase means rents have now risen for seven consecutive months and are, on average, 3.4% higher than this time last year.
A majority of private landlords have rejected the Government’s welfare reform plans for housing benefit, saying there will not be enough accommodation available.
Releasing details of a survey of over 1,000 landlords across the UK, the Residential Landlords Association and the Scottish Association of Landlords found that 65.2% of respondents do not support the Government’s plans for Universal Credit.
An exodus of benefit recipients from high to low cost neighbourhoods is a widely predicted side effect of the government's controversial welfare ceiling. This £26,000 annual limit, will force thousands to move to cheaper areas as the long-standing principle that housing payments should cover rent completely is dissolved by ministers next year, worried policy analysts claim.
Much less has been said about those who decide to stay put and struggle on. A report published by the Pro-Housing Alliance casts new light on the effect of diminished welfare support on a group officially accepted as the hardest hit by the cap: the 1.4 million private renters.
The minister for welfare reform Lord David Freud has admitted that a reduced cap on housing benefit could force families in high-value areas to move.
In a speech to the National Landlords Association yesterday, Lord Freud defended the government’s controverial welfare reform programme and reiterated that welfare reform was designed to take control of ‘spiralling welfare costs’.
One of the housing associations involved in the Government’s direct payment demonstration projects has warned social landlords to get strict with their arrears policy ahead of Universal Credit after revealing it has taken five tenants to court over unpaid rent.
GreenSquare Group – which is partnering with Oxford City Council on one of the Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) six demonstration projects paying housing benefit directly to tenants – issued the warning to landlords at a welfare reform briefing in London today.
More than 1.6m people who are on housing benefit live in the private rented sector.
The statistic emerged in the answer to a question asked by Labour MP Ian Mearns of the Department for Work and Pensions.
There will be a huge shortage of affordable private rental accommodation for tenants on housing benefit if reforms go ahead next spring as currently suggested.
The warning has come from the Government’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office.
Talk to any landlord or letting agent and they're likely to have strong opinions about renting properties to people claiming housing benefit. Whichever side of the fence you sit, accepting tenants who rely on help from the government to pay their rent remains a contentious issue.
Stereotyping still exists and is, quite frankly, appalling. We should be horrified by the lack of respect, understanding and common decency that people claiming benefits face daily.
There has been an 86% increase in workers claiming housing benefit in the last three years as private rents across England soar, according to a new report.
Analysing the latest Government figures, the National Housing Federation’s (NHF) Home Truths report warns that the number of working housing benefit claimants, currently 903,440 of the 5.03 million caseload (as of May 2012), is rising by 10,000 more people every month.