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Housing benefit payments could be paid direct to private landlords to encourage longer term tenancies and stable rents for families in the private sector, following a Labour party policy review.
Under the coalition government's welfare reforms, housing benefit payments will be paid to tenants under the universal credit system which will begin to be rolled out next year, and marks a significant departure from the current arrangement in which many tenants receiving housing benefits have it paid directly to landlords.
Labour looks set to oppose the welfare cuts announced in the autumn statement.
Chancellor George Osborne announced last week that increases in local housing allowance rates, used to calculate housing benefit for private renters, will rise at 1 per cent instead of in line with inflation for two years from April. Rises in other working age benefits, including jobseeker’s allowance and tax credits, will also be capped at 1 per cent.
While welcoming plans to drop the scrapping of housing benefit for the under 25s, housing associations are "deeply concerned" around proposals to cap working age benefit increases at 1% for the next three years, as announced by chancellor Geroge Osborne yesterday.
According to the Autumn Statement document the below inflation rise will apply to Jobseeker’s Allowance; Employment and Support Allowance; Income Support; applicable amounts for Housing Benefit; Maternity Allowance; Statutory Sick Pay; Statutory Maternity Pay; Statutory Paternity Pay; and Statutory Adoption Pay.
However, the move has concerend landlords who fear it could push
Some private landlords with buy-to-let mortgages are being prevented by their lenders from letting to people on benefits.
BM Solutions, the buy-to-let brand of state-backed Lloyds Banking Group, is one lender, and Accord, a Yorkshire Building Society brand, is another.
The welfare budget is set to come under further assault today as chancellor George Osborne delivers his Autumn Statement.
As part of the statement, the Government is expected to provide an update on its economic plans based on the latest forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Over a billion pounds worth of Housing Benefit expenditure was lost to fraud and official error between April 2011 and March 2012, new figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have revealed.
The DWP's statistics show that total overpayments due to fraud and error across the entire benefits system was £3.4 billion, or 2.1% of the total spend of £159.2 billion.
Pressure is mounting on the chancellor to axe plans to cut housing benefit for under 25s, with some reports suggesting the move has already been shelved.
A study published today by umbrella group Homeless Link says welfare cuts are already increasing the chances of young people becoming homeless. And yesterday a Yougov poll commissioned by single homelessness charity Crisis found 57 per cent of people are opposed to cutting housing benefit for under 25s.
Pressure is continuing to mount on new housing minister Mark Prisk to get to grips with the private rental sector.
Prisk – who is currently treading the party line that he will not regulate either agents or landlords, although before he got his ministerial job he had tried to get just such a measure enacted – is to be pressed for action following a meeting at the House of Lords.
Worried councils are reporting huge backlogs in their benefits departments due to problems with a new IT system vital to the government’s flagship benefit reforms.
Councils have seen backlogs of thousands of files, in some cases upwards of 10,000, build up under the automated transfers to local authority systems project, or ATLAS.
An agent is to face trial after denying accusations that he conned a prospective tenant into handing over money to rent a home that was allegedly not his to let out.
Thirugnanaselvam Damayantharan, 50, said in court to have been trading as Kingswood Estate Agents, allegedly showed Elaine Woodside around the property in Purley, Surrey.
