First for Wales
Posted: November 18, 2013 Filed under: Homelessness, Legal, Private renting, Regulation, Wales | Tags: Carl Sargeant, Housing, Wales 1 CommentLegislation introduced today marks a historic moment for housing in Wales but it has wider significance for the rest of the UK too.
It makes history by becoming Wales’s first Housing Bill since it acquired greater devolved powers. The Housing (Wales) Bill aims to ‘ensure that everyone in Wales is able to access a decent home’ (though ministers behind all Housing Bills everywhere say that). The details are what count and the timing and the context are what create the wider significance. As Carl Sargeant, the Welsh minister for housing and regeneration, puts it: ‘Despite the impact of austerity measures and budget decisions taken by the UK Government, the Welsh Government is determined to improve the supply, quality and standards of housing and the proposals in this Housing Bill are crucial in achieving this.’
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Make a wish
Posted: November 5, 2013 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Legal, Welfare reform Leave a commentIf ministers thought the furore over the bedroom tax would die down once it was introduced in April, they were sadly mistaken. What they insist on calling the removal of the spare room subsidy has now been in operation for over 200 days and, if anything, the controversy is still growing.
What began as a harsh but arcane cut in housing benefit – the under-occupation penalty or social sector size criteria – has instead forced its way into the public consciousness. As James Green, external affairs manager of the National Housing Federation, explains: ‘When we started our work on the Welfare Reform Bill it seemed like it would be impossible to make it mainstream or get any traction. Now you can go into any pub in the country and say ‘bedroom tax’ and people know what you’re talking about.’
At a political level, it’s become a symbol of the unfairness of the government’s welfare reforms. At the Lib Dem conference, nobody from the party leadership defended one of their own government’s policies. At the Labour conference, Ed Miliband shook off his party’s caution on welfare to pledge that he would repeal it. At the SNP conference, Alex Salmond used the imposition of the bedroom tax from Westminster as a key part of his appeal to the Scottish people to vote for independence. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some Conservative backbenchers are becoming uncomfortable about the policy as they realise its full implications.
Read the rest of my feature on the human, political and legal implications of the bedroom tax at 24 Housing
Seeing the cracks
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Legal Leave a commentWhether it’s the UN, the Lib Dem conference or tribunals in Fife, the cracks in the bedroom ceiling are growing by the day.
As Pete Apps reports for Inside Housing, only two members of the junior coalition party voted against a grassroots motion at the conference in Glasgow yesterday calling for an immediate evaluation of the controversial policy.
The motion condemned the policy that Lib Dem MPs were instructed to call the ‘spare room subsidy’ for ‘discriminating against the most vulnerable in society’. Richard Kemp, former leader of Liverpool Council, called it ‘reprehensible and evil’ and Baroness Shirley Williams, probably the party’s senior figure, called it a ‘big mistake’.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Shared vision
Posted: August 30, 2013 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing benefit, Legal, Shared ownership 2 CommentsShared ownership seems an obvious solution to the housing problems of people on low and middle incomes – so why does it remain on the margins?
A report out this week from Shelter looks at perceptions of and problems with the part rent-part buy tenure and ways that it could be reformed to take it into the mainstream.
In the process, it makes a pretty convincing case that the piecemeal, alphabet soup of government ownership schemes has done little to make housing more affordable for the squeezed middle and more to create confusion about the options available. In particular, it shows how shared ownership could make more homes in more places more affordable for more people than either version of Help to Buy. The report finds that almost eight out of 10 low to middle income families could not afford a family home with a 95 per cent Help to Buy mortgage.
Bedroom cracks
Posted: March 29, 2013 Filed under: Housing benefit, Legal, Northern Ireland, Welfare reform Leave a commentNorthern Ireland could be set to scrap the bedroom tax as fears grow about the impact on tenants when it is imposed elsewhere from Monday.
The Northern Ireland Assembly has still not approved the Stormont Welfare Reform Bill and is not due to discuss it again until April 16.
However, housing organisations believe the Northern Ireland government is now increasingly likely to decide not to impose the size criteria despite the fact that it will have to meet the £17 million cost from elsewhere in its budget.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Rogue state
Posted: October 4, 2012 Filed under: Legal, Private renting Leave a commentThere is good news and bad news in a Shelter survey about rogue landlords out today but neither is quite what it appears at first glance.
The bad news is that complaints by tenants to their local authority about their private landlord are up 27 per cent in the last three years.
Worse, of 85,000 complaints in the last 12 months, 62 per cent related to category I and II hazards – things like dangerous electrics and damp that are serious or life-threatening, And there were 781 cases where health services had to get involved because of the behaviour or neglect of private landlords.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 