News

One of the housing associations involved in the Government’s direct payment demonstration projects has warned social landlords to get strict with their arrears policy ahead of Universal Credit after revealing it has taken five tenants to court over unpaid rent.

GreenSquare Group – which is partnering with Oxford City Council on one of the Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) six demonstration projects paying housing benefit directly to tenants – issued the warning to landlords at a welfare reform briefing in London today. 

More than 1.6m people who are on housing benefit live in the private rented sector.

The statistic emerged in the answer to a question asked by Labour MP Ian Mearns of the Department for Work and Pensions. 

There will be a huge shortage of affordable private rental accommodation for tenants on housing benefit if reforms go ahead next spring as currently suggested.

The warning has come from the Government’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office. 

A temporary scheme to enable private landlords to receive direct housing benefit payments in return for dropping rents has been a success, welfare reform minister Lord Freud has said.

Ministers temporarily extended the discretion of local authorities to make direct payments to landlords last April when caps to the Local Housing Allowance  (LHA) came in ensuring rates wouldn't exceed £250 for a one bedroom property and £400 for a four bedroom property. 

The boss of a lettings company that specialises in pensioners has urged agents and private landlords not to turn their backs on benefit tenants.

Peter Girling, chairman of Girlings Retirement Rentals, said it was wrong to stigmatise social housing tenants. 

Plans to change the way housing benefit is calculated could leave half of local authority areas in England with shortfalls of properties affordable to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) claimants, the National Audit Office (NAO) has warned.

The NAO has probed the Government’s housing benefit reforms and warns they will result in two million households receiving lower benefits, but will save the Government £2.3bn a year by 2013/14. 

Universal Credit (UC) has major flaws that will need to be addressed to avoid becoming a potential poverty trap, a new report has concluded.

Whilst recognising the need for reform of the benefits system, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's (JRF) report highlights concerns whether UC will actually increase incentives to work and reduce the complexity of the current system. 

The housing minister Mark Prisk says private sector rents have fallen in real terms, despite evidence to suggest they are soaring across the country – and increasing the housing benefit bill.

Mr Prisk – who took on the role of housing minister in September – made the remark earlier this month in a written parliamentary answer to Conservative MP Richard Fuller’s query on the impact of local housing allowance (LHA) caps. 

Business secretary Vince Cable has said the Liberal Democrats will not support Iain Duncan Smith’s calls to cap child-related benefits to families with two children.

Mr Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said yesterday morning – ahead of a speech at the Cambridge Public Policy think tank – that families claiming child-related benefits may find the amount they are entitled to capped at two children. 

Thousands more tenants in the North East could be trapped on the social housing waiting list following the Government’s latest benefit changes.

North East lettings expert Ajay Jagota has spoken out about the possible impact of the proposed cuts and changes and the effect it could have on housing. 

Talk to any landlord or letting agent and they're likely to have strong opinions about renting properties to people claiming housing benefit. Whichever side of the fence you sit, accepting tenants who rely on help from the government to pay their rent remains a contentious issue.

Stereotyping still exists and is, quite frankly, appalling. We should be horrified by the lack of respect, understanding and common decency that people claiming benefits face daily. 

Direct payment of housing benefits to landlords rather than tenants will be allowed – but only in Northern Ireland.

Landlords are now urgently calling for the move by the Department for Work and Pensions to be copied in the rest of the UK. 

The DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) has introduced new rules that will see jobseekers who repeatedly turn down work have their benefits stopped for three years.

Until now, jobseekers who failed to actively seek work could have their payments stopped for up to six months. The DWP claims that jobcentre staff were forced to sanction 495,000 claimants last year, 72,000 of which refused an offer of employment. 

A landlord has been hit with a record fine of £27,400 in the borough which is bringing in blanket landlord licensing of all 35,000 private rental properties in its patch from January 1.

Newnham Council in London brought the prosecution after tenants, including children, were said to have been discovered living in a slum. 

There has been an 86% increase in workers claiming housing benefit in the last three years as private rents across England soar, according to a new report. 

Analysing the latest Government figures, the National Housing Federation’s (NHF) Home Truths report warns that the number of working housing benefit claimants, currently 903,440 of the 5.03 million caseload (as of May 2012), is rising by 10,000 more people every month. 

Ask any housing advice or homelessness officer what the most common question is that they get asked, apart from “Can I have a council house please?” and you will usually find it is “Do you know any landlords or agents who take DSS?”

In London at the moment there are between 5 and 9 people chasing every rental property. Although figures vary, depending on who you read what isn’t in dispute is the fact that landlords don’t have any problems finding tenants and can rent properties perfectly happily without councils, and yet councils need landlords to meet the massive demand for housing. 

DSS tenants get a bad press - often unfairly so. Here are the advantages, and disadvantages, to renting to this type of tenant.

Key points:

1. According to research, DSS tenants stay in properties for twice as long compared with non-DSS ones.
2. You can apply to the council to get housing benefit paid directly to your account if you have a good reason (like a failed credit check).
3. It can be harder to evict a DSS tenant. 

Prime Minister David Cameron has been accused accused of "standing up for the wrong people" as charities warned that up to half a million disabled people and their families - including children and disabled adults living on their own - will be worse off under Universal Credit.

This, at the same time the Government was handing "huge tax cuts to 8,000 people earning over £1 million a year" from next April, according to a Labour MP. 

Peers have raised concerns about the impact of the bedroom tax on disabled people – and said discretionary housing payments will do little to help the problem.

Peers debated the housing benefit regulations in the House of Lords on Tuesday. The regulations introduce the bedroom tax, which will see an estimated 660,000 social housing tenants with spare rooms docked an average of £14 per week in housing benefit. The government estimates the policy will save £500 million a year. 

A Labour MP has hit out at plans to dock the benefits of workers under Universal Credit which he says has almost “escaped notice”.

Michael Meacher, Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton, was citing research by the Resolution Foundation – published earlier this month – which estimates that nearly 1.2 million working adults will face losing some of their benefits under Universal Credit if they do not comply with new requirements to work longer hours, find an additional job or seek higher wages.