The man with a plan who won’t tell us what it is
Posted: March 19, 2015 Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty, Welfare reform | Tags: David Gauke, George Osborne 7 CommentsQuestion of the day: why won’t George Osborne say where he will find another £10 billion of cuts in welfare?
The obvious answer is that he doesn’t want us to find out before the election but there is a more immediate one too: because he can get away with it.
I found myself shouting at the radio twice today as interviewers failed to pin down first Osborne and then financial secretary David Gauke. The £10 billion figure is the so-far unexplained bit of the total £12 billion of welfare cuts Osborne is planning after the election. It matters both in its own right and because it enables him to deflect the Office for Budget Responsibility’s point about ‘rollercoaster’ cuts in public services.
Getting real
Posted: February 2, 2015 Filed under: Housing benefit, Private renting | Tags: Brandon Lewis, Kris Hopkins, ONS Leave a commentA technical change to an official index undermines everything that ministers have been telling us about private rents.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its latest Index of Private Housing Rental Prices on Friday using improved methodology that puts the annual rent inflation rate at 2.1 per cent since January 2011.
That may not sound like much compared to soaring house prices but that is 75 per cent higher than the 1.2 per cent annual increase for the last four years derived from the old methodology. That had always seemed on the low side given the increases that tenants said they were paying, especially in London.
Here’s an ONS graph showing the difference it makes since January 2012:
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Overpaid and overclaimed
Posted: January 14, 2015 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit | Tags: DWP, Public accounts committee 3 CommentsToo expensive to repeal the bedroom tax? Look what’s happened to housing benefit overpayments.
A damning report published on Tuesday by the Commons public accounts committee reveals that overpayments cost £1.4 billion in 2013/14, the first year of the under-occupation penalty. That is an increase of £420 million since 2010/11.
Of that £1.4 billion, the DWP estimates that £900 million was claimant error, £340 million claimant fraud and £150 million official error. Overpayments since 2000/01 now total a staggering £12.6 billion – and there seem to be no figures on how much of the money that is overpaid is ever recovered.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Winners and losers
Posted: January 12, 2015 Filed under: Buy to let, Housing benefit, Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting | Tags: Financial Times 2 CommentsSo buy to let landlords made £177 billion from rising house prices over the last five years – and that does not include rental income.
A series of linked stories in the Financial Times this morning make clear who the beneficiaries of booming property market have been since 2009, when interest rates fell to a record low. In addition to buy to letters, they are home owners in London (prices up by £563 billion in the last five years) and in Conservative constituencies outside the capital (prices up eight times faster than in Labour seats). Even social landlords get in on the act, with a 20 per cent increase in the value of their stock since 2009.
Yet all the research by Savills and impressive FT data visualisation beg some far bigger questions about what it calls the politics of British housing. Why has this happened? If those are the winners, who are the losers?
10 things about 2014: part 1
Posted: December 23, 2014 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Devolution, Housing benefit, Television, Universal credit 1 CommentThe first of a two-part look back at the issues and people that I’ve been blogging about this year.
1) Groundhog Day on the bedroom tax
The year ended as it began, in a welter of parliamentary accusation and counter-accusation that left tenants in England and Wales still having to pay the under-occupation penalty. A Commons debate in December just before the Christmas recess a classic example: Labour called a vote condemning the bedroom tax that didn’t actually change anything; the Lib Dems voted in favour and produced a weasly justification for the decision; and the Conservatives went from claiming it would save £1 million a day in January to £500 million, £1 billion and even £2 billion by the end of the year.
However, there were at least three occasions during the year when it looked as though significant changes would be achieved.
Devo questions
Posted: November 27, 2014 Filed under: Devolution, Housing benefit, Scotland | Tags: Smith Commission Leave a commentThe devolution of new powers over the housing costs elements of universal credit raises questions not just for Scotland but for the whole of the UK.
The report of the Smith Commission published this morning only proposes two major changes to the existing arrangements for universal credit:
- The Scottish Government will be given the administrative power to change the frequency of UC payments, vary the existing plans for single household payments, and pay landlords direct for housing costs in Scotland
- The Scottish Parliament will have the power to vary the housing cost elements of UC, including varying the under-occupancy charge and local housing allowance rates, eligible rent, and deductions for non-dependents.
All other elements of universal credit, including the earnings taper, conditionality and sanctions will remain reserved to Westminster. Some other benefits outside universal credit, including discretionary housing payments, will be devolved. National media coverage was dominated by the proposals on income tax but other taxes that affect housing, including capital gains tax and VAT, will be reserved.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
The long goodbye to the bedroom tax
Posted: September 8, 2014 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit | Tags: DWP, Iain Duncan Smith 1 CommentThree images spring to mind in the aftermath of Friday’s momentous vote to amend the bedroom tax.
The first is of a bunker deep in the bowels of DWP headquarters Caxton House. Iain Duncan Smith sits at a desk surrounded by a dwindling band of loyalists who still believe in the policy: his ministers Mark Harper and Lord Freud plus a loyal special adviser and perhaps a press officer.
AS IDS raves that nothing has changed (and that the universal credit is on time and on budget) I imagine the others exchanging nervous looks between themselves as they assure him that the removal of the spare room subsidy really is saving £1 million a day and making housing fairer.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Beyond belief
Posted: September 2, 2014 Filed under: Housing benefit, Labour market, Welfare reform | Tags: Iain Duncan Smith 1 CommentSo is it time to celebrate the rise in housing benefit claims by people in work as a reflection of the government’s success in getting people off benefits?
That was the claim made by Iain Duncan Smith at work and pensions questions yesterday as he answered Labour jibes about the soaring numbers of working households now dependent on state help with their rent.
The work and pensions secretary told Labour’s Emma Lewell-Buck:
‘The figure the hon. Lady did not give is that out-of-work housing benefit claims are falling, and that is because people who were claiming it are now going into work. That means that they are earning more money, which means that the likelihood of their being in poverty is far less. I wonder whether the hon. Lady would like to get up sometime and congratulate us on getting more people back to work and spending less on housing benefit as a result.’
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 