Posted: June 6, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Housing finance, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform |
Ed Miliband has ended three decades of political consensus that it’s better to subsidise rents than new homes but changing course will not be easy.
The Labour leader’s speech in Newham this morning is significant in all kinds of ways: for the party’s positioning ahead of the next election; for the implied switch to contributory benefits and ‘something for something’; for tackling low pay; and for the careful use of ‘social security’ to avoid the loaded term ‘welfare’.
Even the setting – Newham Dockside – is significant since it looks very much like an endorsement of the more proactive but harsher approach to benefit claimants adopted by its mayor Sir Robin Wales.
All of those things could have major implications for housing but none so much as the plan to shift spending back from housing benefit to bricks and mortar – the end of ‘letting housing benefit take the strain’ and admitting the failure over decades to build enough homes.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my post for Inside Housing
Posted: May 29, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform |
Bit by bit the picture of how housing policy would look under a Labour government is becoming clearer but there are still some blurred areas.
In the latest results from its policy review process, the party has published more new ideas on the private rented sector. Following up on earlier proposals on letting agents and their charges and more stable tenancies for families, this one is all about the case for greater regulation of landlords.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: May 13, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform |
‘She was fine before this bedroom tax. It was dreamt up in London, by people in offices and big houses. They have no idea the effect it has on people like my mum.’
I’m not sure how the architects of what ministers prefer to call the spare room subsidy will react to the words of Steven Bottrill or the tragic suicide of his mother Stephanie. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) told BBC radio news yesterday that it would be ‘inappropriate to comment’ on an individual case but that did not stop a ‘source’ from adding that the government had made discretionary help available.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: April 30, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Welfare reform |
So can the Quiet Man with missionary zeal really deliver on the universal credit?
The policy regarded as (depending on your point of view) flagship reform or slow-motion train crash, started in a low-key way in Ashton-under-Lyne on Monday. So low key that, according to the Guardian, nobody turned up for help on the first day.
However, the internal battles over it revealed in Rachel Sylvester’s column in today’s Times (here for those with access) were anything but low key. She describes how Iain Duncan Smith battled with civil servants, the Treasury and Downing Street to secure what he sees as a moral mission of ‘changing people’.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: April 6, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Budget, Football, Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform |
This is a tale of two cities. Of one city and two different planets. And of one City and one United.
On Monday a wave of welfare reforms began to hit claimants and tenants across the country. Today the top rate of tax is cut from 50p to 45p on earnings above £150,000. For the connection between the two, in the immortal words of Carlos Tevez:
The city is home to the richest football team in the English Premier League, Manchester City, and the most successful, Manchester United (give or take the location of Old Trafford). It is also the bedroom tax capital of the UK with more than 14,000 tenants facing an average loss of £624 a year. They have lost a total of £168,000 this week – less than many of the footballers earn in a week on their own – and will lose a total of £8,736,000 this year.
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Posted: March 29, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Legal, Northern Ireland, Welfare reform |
Northern 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
Posted: March 11, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform |
So three weeks left until the start of the bedroom tax: is there a still a chance of last-minute concessions?
Thanks to a steady stream of heartbreaking real-life cases in the national media, the issue is not going away for the government. Attempts by ministers from David Cameron down to make the fairness argument for the policy continue to founder on inconvenient facts.
Later today Iain Duncan Smith faces an uncomfortable time at work and pensions questions and on Wednesday Cameron is certain to face another grilling at prime minister’s questions.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: February 28, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform |
With even the Monster Raving Loonies calling it a crazy policy, is there still time for changes to the bedroom tax?
It’s a measure of how big a political issue it’s become that it was one of only three nominated by voters in Eastleigh for the BBC to put to the 15 candidates in today’s by-election. Ten came out against the bedroom tax, with Howling Laud Hope of the Monster Raving Loony William Hill Party making the far too sensible point that ‘this is like going back to the pre-Victorian window tax.’ The coalition parties could only rely on the backing of the Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party, the Christian Party (Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship) and an independent.
The by-election winner will enter a House of Commons that is at last giving the bedroom tax the sort of scrutiny it deserves. The Welfare Reform Act packed so many changes in to one piece of legislation that there was little time for detailed debate on each of them. Even when contradictions and unintended consequences were picked up in the Lords, the amendments were reversed in the Commons.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: February 21, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Legal, Scotland, Social housing, Welfare reform |
It seems remarkable that with less than 40 days to go until we start taxing them we still don’t really know for certain what a bedroom is.
So it’s not surprising that the move by Knowsley Housing Trust to reclassify 566 of its two- and three-bed homes as one- and two-bed has attracted so much attention. Chief executive Bob Taylor told Inside Housing that a stock review showed some homes are currently classified as having more bedrooms than they actually have, because tenants are not using the extra rooms as bedrooms and were therefore paying too much rent.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: February 19, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Wales, Welfare reform |
So the government has finally admitted the potentially devastating consequences of welfare reform in a cumulative impact assessment.
Before anyone starts to think that Iain Duncan Smith has undergone a dramatic change of heart, I should add that I am of course taking about the Welsh government, not the UK one.
The second stage review of the impact of welfare reform in Wales is accompanied by an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) of the effects of welfare reform on labour supply in Wales.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 