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.