The cut in housing benefit for tenants with spare bedrooms will have a devastating impact across Wales, Housing Minister Carl Sargeant has said.
From April 1, changes to housing benefit by the UK Government will mean that working-age recipients could face a cut of 14% to their payments for one spare bedroom, and a 25% cut for two spare bedrooms or more.
Critics have called these changes the “Bedroom Tax”.
Welsh Housing Minister Carl Sargeant said: “Research shows that around 40,000 households in Wales will lose an average of £11 per week from this change and, sadly, it is many of the most vulnerable people in society who will be affected.
“The Welsh Government is committed to doing all it can to ensure that the change does the least possible damage to our communities. However, we are under no illusion.
“We know that people will suffer hardship and this will put even more pressure on public services that are already straining to cope due to the current financial climate.
“We have allocated funding for 2013/14 to ensure that people on low income continue to receive council tax benefit.
“We are also providing £750,000 for the coming financial year to help on issues such as advice, landlord liaison and face to face contact with tenants having problems meeting their housing costs.
“We were also able to allocate some additional funding towards the end of the financial year to a number of projects focused on preventing homelessness, including extra resources for the homelessness prevention funds of all local authorities.
“Also, several local authorities have joined together to undertake projects that reduce the rate of tenancy failure and put in place solutions that tenants say they prefer.
“The Welsh Government is hugely concerned that many already hard pressed households are facing hardship and so is looking to find ways of supporting tenants and organisations to mitigate the effects of this highly damaging policy.“
The fall out from this reduction in Housing benefit is a while off yet.
Those who do not pay the balance of the shortfall in rent to its landlords, including Caerphilly County borough council, will find that they incur ` Rent Arrears`, those who do not pay those will, according to the Caerphilly council rent arrears policy,subject themselves to eviction, those who are evicted, and, in most circumstances, will cost the ratepayers more money to accommodate than the reduction in Housing Benefit payments raises for the council.
Caerphilly County Borough Council have recently made a contribution of £500,000 towards accommodation for the homeless and disaffected in its area of responsibility, this money is to convert a property in Nelson for use by homeless families, they already pay out thousands of pounds in bed and breakfast costs for the homeless in Caerphilly, and the bills still keep rising, this odious Tory policy will make that position much much worse and an increased drain of Caerphilly council budgets in the near and longer term future.
The misery this will cause in Caerphilly is understated and Councillors are clearly in denial on the subject, to top it all, Caerphilly council have been granted the dubious task of being one of the pilot areas where the yet to be seen Universal Benefit will be rolled out, I predict even more misery and chaos of monumental proportions when local citizens are denied benefit, in the future, to which they fell they can lay claim, they will appeal, the Tribunal Service is already running hearing appeals up to ten months after submission,that is ten months without benefits, what will these people do? where will they get money from? there will be no Loans from the DWP, no emergency payments to tide claimants over, where do they live in the meantime if the council refuse or stop their access to Housing Benefits?.
This really is a brilliant example of how to dismantle the welfare state, these changes and alteration are said to be `Cost savings` they are nothing of the sort.
I agree it will take months for arrears to build and court action to take place. Of course not all effects will be seen as those who struggle on silently reducing expenditure on heating/food and so on to pay their rent will largely be invisivle.
It is absurd that the amount of benefit cut for those in social housing can often result in a lower payment than they would get if they were renting privately. These cuts are a massive subsidy for buy-to-let landlords in a desperate hope to further inflate an overinflated housing market.