Benefit baseline

The ‘hard truths’ about welfare outlined by George Osborne beg far more questions than answers when it comes to housing.

In a speech yesterday the chancellor set out plans for £12 billion worth of cuts in welfare and £13 billion cuts in departmental budgets in 2016/17 and 2017/18 if the Conservatives win the next election.

And he singled out housing as the target of two specific cuts: housing benefit for the under-25s; and council housing for people earning more than £60,000 a year.

However, a quick look at the detail of those proposals raises real doubt about how much they would really save and what else might be on the Tory agenda.

Read the rest of this entry »