Housing benefit and the coalition

Posted: August 14, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit | 1 Comment

What has happened to housing benefit in the four years since the government inherited a system it claimed was ‘out of control’?

New housing benefit statistics published this week cover the period up to May 2014. They reflect not just successive government cuts but a changing pattern of claims and changing tenure over the last four years. Here are five things that struck me:

1) The housing benefit bill continues to grow despite all of the coalition’s reforms. The May 2014 figures show just under five million claims for an average of £92.69 a week, a total of £24.0 billion. That compares with £20.8 billion in May 2010 (4.8 million claims averaging £84.20 a week).

The coalition never claimed that its reforms would reduce the total bill, just that they would reduce the rate of growth from previous forecasts. The bill has grown by 15.4 per cent over the last four years. However, the annual increase has slowed from 6.2 per cent in 2010/11 to 1.3 per cent in 2013/14.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Working it out

Posted: August 5, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housing benefit, Labour market | Tags: | 1 Comment

As Labour and the Conservatives renew hostilities about the housing benefit bill, which of them will do something about it?

In the latest round of Labour’s The Choice summer offensive, shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves released figures from the House of Commons Library showing that the total bill is set to rise to £27 billion by 2018/19.

Within that, she highlighted the soaring number of claims by people in work from 617,000 at the last election to 962,000 now and 1.2 million by 2018/19. That doubling in working claims will cost a total of £12.9 billion or £488 for every household in Britain between 2010/11 and 2018/19.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Going the extra mile

Posted: August 4, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Garden cities, Housebuilding | Leave a comment

How far should the government go to buy off local opposition to new garden cities?

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said over the weekend that ministers would consider options including council tax reductions and house price guarantees to ensure that local communities do not lose out. He told the BBC’s Countryfile programme (watch from about eight minutes in): ‘What I’m saying is we’re actively looking at things like that to show that we will go the extra mile to allay those concerns of people who feel that their property, or the price of their home, might be affected. We don’t want people to lose out.’

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Welcome shift

Posted: July 29, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning | Leave a comment

People seem to be getting the ‘Yes to Homes’ message at last but have the nimbys really had their day?

A survey of public attitudes to new housebuilding published by the DCLG on Saturday reveals a welcome shift when people are asked whether they support or oppose more homes being built in their local area.

New housing and planning minister Brandon Lewis welcomed the results as evidence that nimbyism is on the wane.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Closed doors

Posted: July 28, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing market, London, Planning | Tags: | Leave a comment

What is it about a ‘poor door’ that causes so much outrage?

The term has captured something on both sides of the Atlantic: first on an exclusive development in New York City last year and then applied to agrowing trend in London reported in Saturday’s Guardian.

The London building at the centre of that story – One Commerical Street on the eastern fringes of the City – was the same one that I blogged about last year when it was chosen by chancellor George Osborne as the venue for his speech arguing that the economy was ‘turning the corner’.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Survey story – part two

Posted: July 24, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Housing market, Private renting, Social housing, Television | 1 Comment

Here’s the second part of my blog on some key themes emerging from the latest English Housing Survey.

Part one looked at changing trends in tenure, the impact of the financial crisis and the true nature of under-occupation. This final part looks at three more trends that caught my eye: private renters are not as satisfied as they seem; affordability may not be what you think; and social renters do not conform to TV stereotypes.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Survey story – part one

Posted: July 23, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing market, Private renting, Social housing | 1 Comment

It’s time again for a welter of new information about housing in England. Here’s the first of a two-part blog on what caught my eye.

The English Housing Survey also covers stock conditions, energy efficiency and fire safety but this blog concentrates on the story on households. Information from it was first released in February but more followed today. Here are the first three of six themes that seemed significant to me.

The slow death of the property-owning democracy continues: I blogged about the key trends in tenure in February. It wasn’t just about the rise and rise of private renting (it had been clear that it would overtake social renting for some time) but a huge shift within owner-occupation.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

A room of their own

Posted: July 18, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Social housing | Leave a comment

What does the Lib Dem change of heart mean for the future of the bedroom tax?

It is not quite the u-turn that’s being claimed in some quarters but it is a significant change of direction. It’s not quite the mature change of mind in the light of the evidence that’s being claimed by the Lib Dems either: the evidence has been there from the beginning and the independent evaluation that supposedly triggered the change in policy must have been available at the DWP for weeks before it was sneaked out on Tuesday.

Read Rob Gershon’s great blog for a forensic analysis of Wednesday night’s statement by Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander and all the previous evidence that he seems somehow to have missed. I’d add only one thing to that: Danny could have asked his dad.

This is of course not the first time that the Lib Dems have withdrawn support from the bedroom tax. In April it turned out that Tim Farron meant the party but not the bit of it that’s in government. This time around the leadership is falling into line with the grassroots to call for specific reforms to the policy.

-> Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Shuffling the deck

Posted: July 16, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Civil service, Housebuilding, Planning, Universal credit | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

So housing seems to have kept the politicians who should have gone and lost the one who was making a difference.

Speculation ahead of the reshuffle suggested that Eric Pickles and Iain Duncan Smith would leave their posts as part of the cull of middle aged men in the Cabinet. True, some of the stories seemed a bit thin (a woman with a posh accent overheard talking on the phone didn’t seem like much to go on) but I lived in hope. I also looked forward to the DWP press release arguing that it proved that universal credit is ‘on track and on schedule’.

Instead it’s business as usual at the top of their two departments with a shake-up lower down the ministerial scale. After just over nine months in the job, Kris Hopkins is now the former housing minister and is shunted sideways into local government. Brandon Lewis moves from that job and gets a promotion to minister of state for housing and planning. Penny Mordaunt comes in as junior minister responsible for coastal communities.

-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

In case you missed it

Posted: July 15, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Today looks like a very good day for the DWP to sneak out independent research on the impact of the bedroom tax and cuts to the local housing allowance.

While Iain Duncan Smith seems to have survived the Cabinet cull of middle aged men, the two reports offer in-depth scrutiny of two of his most controversial policies. There is as yet no DWP press release or comment but you can find the reports here and here on its website.

This blog will concentrate on the independent evaluation of what the DWP calls the removal of the spare room subsidy. The report by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research and Ipsos Mori analyses the effects on and the responses of tenants, landlords, local authorities, voluntary and statutory organisations and advice agencies and lenders.

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