Bedroom tax will hit families on benefits (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)
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Bedroom tax will hit families on benefits
5:00pm Tuesday 16th October 2012 in News By Laura Shack
Mel Gaskin and her son Jacob will lose out because of the new bedroom tax
A SHORT supply of homes in rural Cotswolds could force thousands of families on benefits to lose £780 a year on average because of a new "bedroom tax".
From next April, working-aged people living in homes with more bedrooms than they need will have to downsize or see deductions of up to 25 per cent in their housing benefit.
The Government initiative called the Housing Needs Assessment will aim to save around £500million, free-up larger properties for those living in overcrowded homes and create work incentives for people who live off housing benefits.
An estimated 30,000 households will be affected in the South West, with an average reduction of £15 a week.
But in rural Cotswolds, where houses are limited, many say they will not have the luxury of being able to downsize locally.
Single mum Mel Gaskin lives with her five-year-old son Jacob in a three bedroom house in Cirencester, is set to lose 14 per cent of her benefits. She said the wrong people were being targeted by the scheme and it should look instead at the large number of over-60s living alone in three-bedroom homes.
"There are people who have this attitude 'but I've lived there for 20 years' but I don't think they realise the affect, the widespread need for larger houses," she said.
Under the changes, any adult or couple under the age of 60 will only be entitled to one bedroom.
Children under the age of ten will be required to share a room with one other child of any gender and children under the age of 15 will be required to share a room with one other child of the same gender.
No extra bedrooms will be allowed for foster children or those who stay with parents as part of shared access arrangements.
On average, one unoccupied bedroom will cost householders 14 per cent of their benefits, and two or more unoccupied bedrooms will set householders back 25 per cent.
Social housing landlord Bromford Housing is currently working with Cotswold District Council to find out the extent of the problem in the Gloucestershire region.
Wiltshire Council’s most recent figures indicate that of 30,000 homes in receipt of housing benefits, around 2,893 will be affected by the new rules, with 437 of those by two or more bedrooms.
A report by the Department for Work and Pensions, updated in June 2012, admits that those in rural areas will be hardest hit because of the shortage of available properties.
However, it states that action is needed because Government expenditure has nearly doubled over the past decade, from £11billion to £21billion in the last financial year.
Darrin Gamble, head of neighbourhoods at Bromford Housing, said: "In some circumstances we have wanted to offer families choice to have the room to grow and create sustainable communities but times have changed."
Speaking at a Chesterton Community Project meeting last week, Bromford Housing representative Simon Taylor said people would be caught out by "severe penalties" if they did not act quickly.
"Some people are burying their heads in the sand, which will make it difficult to move in time," he said. "I don't think you will find anyone in social housing who supports this policy, but it is not up to us."
For more information on the changes go to bromford.co.uk for details.
Comments(18)
Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum
says...
5:17am Wed 17 Oct 12
toryboy5
says...
10:30am Wed 17 Oct 12
David Broad
says...
12:26pm Wed 17 Oct 12
You obviously live in the sort of world I dream of, leave school get a job, fall in love get a house, get married, have kids, like my dad did but that was 1955.
The cheap private sector place to rent or buy is a distant memory, you need about three kids before you can get a Bromford 3 bed house now, 1955 you just had to get married to get one.
Not every jobless person chooses to be unemployed, plenty do admittedly,
Toryboy5 (shouldn't that be BNP boy?)
has a good point, there is no way for overcrowded 2 bedroom owner occupied mortgaged property dwellers to get a Bromford 3 bed property,
Work hard be worse off. The rules need tweaking, Bromford need more 2 bed properties, not rocket science but clearly beyond Bromfords battery hen based policies to lobby to be allowed to do a buy and let deal.
Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum
says...
12:46pm Wed 17 Oct 12
7 years of higher education, after my 5 years of secondary education, (no, not university), gave me the sound footing to make myself and my family a comfortable life.
Everybody has the chance of an education. Its up to them if they wish to make the most of the opportunity or waste their life.
What I cannot abide is the moaning of the masses who have made their bed ……….. and whine as soon as things go wrong.
Jessica Rabbit
says...
2:47pm Wed 17 Oct 12
Many of the people in social housing (not all of them) choose the lifestyle they live. Many do not work but are still able to buy 50" LCD TV's, playstations, cigarettes, sky TV and alcohol with their benefit money... So... Is it going to be that hard for them to pay a bit more in rent for their spare room?
I do understand that not not everyone in social housing and living on benefits is doing so by choice... These people may through no fault of their own have ended up in a situation that they never expected. But yes... I still think that if you have a spare room, you need to pay for it... It's a way of giving back to society... The same society who is allowing you to live for free.
toryboy5
says...
5:24pm Wed 17 Oct 12
I think you will find the party you represent share the same values as myself to work hard and strive to be the best you can, if you get knocked down on the way, the system is there to help you back up but it is not there to be used and abused like so many people do.
There are people in this District that have screwed the system for years, it is the minority that ruin it for the ones that really need it, the ones who have lost jobs through the recession or have to care for dependents etc.
delta42
says...
2:08pm Thu 18 Oct 12
bobirving
says...
8:00am Fri 19 Oct 12
Who are all these people who live in "social housing (not all of them) choose the lifestyle they live. Many do not work but are still able to buy 50" LCD TV's, playstations, cigarettes, sky TV and alcohol with their benefit money... " Do you actually know them? Or did someone down the pub tell you about a bloke who knew... Just because you read it in the Daily Fail or the Sun does not mean that it's true, you know.
JGH
says...
4:07pm Fri 19 Oct 12
If money is so hard to come-by can I suggest she stops wasting money on tattoos and uses it to put a roof over her child and food on the table. Choices, we all have them, some quite frankly do not take a degree to make.
819807
says...
4:27pm Fri 19 Oct 12
Disappointing that the housing assoc has imposed an age restriction on the who the rules do and do not apply to, have they not heard of age discrimination?
This is all about minimising wasteage or as my old metalwork teacher used to say 'the right tool for the right job'.
People must stop portraying themselves as victims in some sort of race to the bottom, it can put an indelible print left on those around you.
Council Taxpayer
says...
9:49am Sun 21 Oct 12
The points he makes are valid and it would be grossly unfair to penalise hard-pressed families on the basis of a bedroom check on their homes when no realistic alternative is available.
If Cllr Broad could persuade his colleagues at CDC to abandon the council's disastrous policy of promoting countless luxury lakeside holiday homes for the rich over the affordable housing needs of the masses, maybe we might start to tackle the shocking housing shortage in the district.
Top marks to Cllr Broad for standing up to the right-wing prejudices of the toffs who obviously have no idea of what it is like to struggle on low income to bring up a family.
Is he in the right party though?
Smythe
says...
4:23pm Sun 21 Oct 12
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Cotswold Hug A Tory
Susie Clark
says...
1:36pm Mon 22 Oct 12
Robert Jeanes
says...
3:26pm Mon 22 Oct 12
Council Taxpayer
says...
9:27am Tue 23 Oct 12
I therefore do not have any "Liberal Democrat colleagues" as she suggests but I am critical of CDC's policy in the Water Park because it has been an unmitigated disaster which has done nothing for local residents but has lined the pockets of greedy developers and crooks.
You don't have to be a Liberal Democrat to see how mismanagement of huge tracts of brownfield land that could have been used for decent homes instead of holiday pads for rhe well-heeled has created the Cotswold housing crisis.
Susie Clark
says...
12:26pm Tue 23 Oct 12
Council Taxpayer
says...
11:58am Wed 24 Oct 12
For twenty years - I have little interest in who was in power at any particular time - CDC has squandered a golden opportunity in the Water Park by concentrating on holiday home development to the exclusion of everything else.
All the eggs were put into one basket as the council embraced the holiday home developers - on occasions a bit too eagerly - and quickly lost the plot.
The original little log cabins that could genuinely be classed as weekend retreats soon became grander and more costly until the most recent examples have grown into lakeside palaces of up to 6,500 square feet costing millions.
This whole enterprise has lined the pockets of developers and, we now know, a handful of crooks but has not resulted in the pomised prosperity and job creation.
It is true that some jobs have been created. In fact I recently met a car load of these new employes on their way to clean the homes of wealthy weekenders on a gated lakeside development in South Cerney. All were Eastern European and only one of them could speak any English at all and had to translate for her colleagues.
Because these properties are, in every material respect, luxury, modern, well insulated homes that are, in many cases, superior to the local housing stock, the planning conditions governing holiday occupancy have proved impossible to enforce.
CDC got itself into an awful mess trying, wasted a fortune on legal advice and a pubic inquiry and now appears to have kicked the whole affair into the long grass because it is all proving too messy.
My point is that the Water Park provided a unique opportunity for the creation of new businesses combined with a mix of genuine housing and holiday homes. Instead it was all handed over to the holiday home developers while conman Dennis Grant and his partner-in-crime Nick Hanson were put in charge of the the umbrella organisation charged with planning the future of the park. Grant's so-called "Masteplan" shames all who are associated with it and, yet, the new Water Park Trust clings to it while the author languishes in his jail cell.
Of course, it all comes down to the profit of the few with the connivance of various greedy individuals who, the residents of the Water Park now fervently hope, will soon have their collars felt by the investigating team from the City of London Police and will then be packed off to keep Dennis company.
I accept that the development of the Water Park did not directly cause the acute housing crisis in the Cotswolds but it could certainly have helped alleviate it, with a little bit of imagination and drive from our elected representatives.
David Broad says...
2:53am Wed 17 Oct 12
How can people downsize to two bedroom properties when there are none in a five mile radius of their home.
These are people not battery chickens.
These are their homes, its bad enough being made redundant without someone telling you you have to move to a smaller house because you have a spare bedroom.
I guess it is Bromford who have their heads buried in the sand,