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The Universal Credit direct payment demonstration projects will be extended for a further six months, Minister for Welfare Reform Lord Freud recently announced, as new findings from the projects are published.
The Department for Work and Pensions says the extension will help to further develop the support needed for social housing tenants moving onto Universal Credit. The projects will now run until the end of the year.
Six in ten landlords and agents are concerned about receiving rent if they accept housing benefit tenants.
A new survey of 500 landlords and agents by website Dssmove found that rent apart, most landlords and agents (75%) were happy to let to Local Housing Allowance tenants.
The Welsh government's minister for tackling poverty has warned that the coalition's Universal Credit (UC) system has thrown a question mark over the state's ability to deliver support to most vulnerable people.
Huw Lewis told assembly members in the Senedd how UC will have a knock-on impact on Welsh government support such as free school meals.
Four families have launched a legal challenge against the government’s benefit cap on the grounds it is ‘discriminatory and unreasonable’.
The families have issued judicial review proceedings against the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith today at London’s High Court.
One in four low-to-middle income households are spending more than 35 per cent of their income on housing, a report has found.
The study from the Resolution Foundation think tank has found 1.3 million low-income families across Britain are spending more than they can afford on housing.
Welfare reform minister Lord Freud has described a suicide linked to his controversial bedroom tax policy as a "desperately sad event".
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, which is investigating the impact of housing benefit reforms in Wales, Lord Freud extended his condolences to the family of Stephanie Bottrill, who left a note in which she blamed the government for her death.
A grandmother who killed herself left a note in which she blamed the Government for her death.
Just days before she died Stephanie Bottrill, 53, from in Solihull in the West Midlands, told neighbours she simply could not afford to live any more.
Birmingham City Council recorded a huge increase in the number of people seeking help to pay their rent in the first two weeks after government welfare reforms came into effect.
The council says almost 2,000 applications were made for Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) in the first two weeks of April – 50% more than for the whole of the first quarter of 2012-13.
Housing benefit payments will be sent directly to landlords after tenants have gone into two months of arrears during the Universal Credit (UC) pathfinders.
A circular published by the Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) said: “Landlords can refer rent arrears cases to Universal Credit; those which are under two months’ rent will trigger Universal Credit to contact the claimant to discuss their non-payment as part of the Personal Budgeting Support process, where as those with over two months arrears will be switched to direct rent payment automatically and relevant budgeting support activity arranged subsequently.”
Universal credit will lead to an average increase in rent arrears of £180 for each tenant, according to law firm Winckworth Sherwood.
A major shake-up of the benefits system began yesterday with a pilot involving new claimants in Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester. Universal credit will merge several benefits and tax credits, including housing benefit, into one monthly payment.
