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UN to investigate bedroom tax

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. 

96% of bedroom tax victims have nowhere to downsize to

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. 

Universal Credit pilots find claimants struggling

Half of Universal Credit claimants in some areas could struggle to use the government’s online system because they lack IT skills and have limited internet access, local government pilots have found.

The findings come in a report by the Department for Work and Pensions about 12 local authority pilots of the new benefits system. It has been published as the Universal Credit system is rolled out to job centres in Oldham and Warrington, having been started in Wigan and Ashton-Under-Lyne earlier this year. 

Homeless tenants 'will' be forced out of London

A Communities and Local Government select committee report out today on the private rented sector said moving people out of London was the only way councils could mitigate the impact of benefit caps.

Cuts to benefits had left local authorities with too few properties in their boroughs where they could afford to house claimants, the MPs found.