National debt advice charity the Money Advice Trust has reported that rent arrears are now the fastest growing debt problem in the UK.
The number of calls to the charity’s National Debtline service from people with rent arrears has risen significantly since the economic crisis first hit in 2007.
Given that you may have become used to hearing about the government tightening up on payments like housing benefits, you might be rather surprised to learn not just that the number of people who claim it has gone up by rather a lot, but also that the number of people with jobs who receive housing benefit has risen so much - an extra 310 every day claims the National Housing Federation.
That's not just because wages have stagnated so much, with many people coping with freezes to their pay, or only being able to find part-time work. But it's also down to very significant increases in the cost of private rents.
THE full effect of sweeping changes to the welfare system has yet to become clear.
A cross-party group of councillors has heard from senior officials from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) about the new Universal Credit, which was introduced in Rugby last Monday.
The meeting was part of the early stages of its fact-finding work as the council seeks assurances over the support to residents affected by the benefit cap, changes to local council tax support, the so-called bedroom tax and Universal Credit.
THE “bedroom tax” is costing millions of pounds more to implement in Scotland than it will save, the country’s council leaders have revealed.
Local government body Cosla claims the policy will cost about £58-60 million this year, which outweighs the estimated savings of £50m on the benefits bill.
This time last week, there were confident predictions that the catastrophic development of universal credit was about to claim its biggest victim to date. Not Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state, but Robert Devereux, his permanent secretary. Devereux, whose experience of welfare reform goes back to the early days of new Labour, knows the department well, and he's also had the now-obligatory spell outside the department and outside Whitehall.
But the huge process of introducing a live system that folds six different in-work benefits into one that keeps up with a claimant's circumstances week by week has lurched from crisis to crisis. In September, the National Audit Office (again) raised serious concerns. The public accounts committee followed up with evidence sessions with the main players. Its report, it was anticipated, would lead to Devereux's swift departure.
Ahead of an Opposition Day Debate in the House of Commons, charity Citizens Advice has warned that changes to Housing Benefit are “simply creating more problems”.
The Housing Benefit reform, which came into effect in April this year, is aiming to cut costs by restricting the size of accommodation a family can receive Housing Benefit for.
The lack of affordable housing is adding to the country's cost of living crisis with private rents in England forecast to rise another 44% by 2020.
And research carried out on behalf of the National Housing Federation shows that more and more parents are helping their children to pay their rent.
The Government's benefits cap will struggle to meet its objectives of saving taxpayers' money and encouraging people into work, a report has found.
The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) studied the results of the cap in Haringey, one of four London boroughs chosen as pilot areas for the scheme.
The UK's housing system is in crisis due to a lack of housing stock. Shelter estimates that there is a need for 250.000 new homes to be build per year and that is just for England alone. It is pretty much universally accepted that successive governments did not find building homes politically-attractive and, due to the short-sighted ineptitude, there are simply not enough homes especially in the social sector.
So how does the Tory-led government tackle the housing shortage crisis? Do they listen to housing and business experts and build more homes? No, they ignored these experts. Their solution to the housing shortage crisis is to manipulate the benefits system so that tenants on a low incomes pay for the housing crisis via cuts to Housing Benefit.
The government's benefit cap will struggle to meet its aims of encouraging people into work and saving taxpayers' money, a report suggests.
The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) looked at the London borough of Haringey, one of four pilot areas.