The average financial loss faced by social housing tenants as a result of the government's controversial bedroom tax could heat a family home for almost a week, a North West-based housing association has warned.
According to the Regenda Group, the average £14 a week cut in housing benefits which tenants are facing is equivalent to the cost of six days heating every week.
Housing is a human right. That isn’t just my opinion, but also that of the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 of the declaration, concerning the right to an adequate standard of living, is clear on the matter:
‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.’ (emphasis on housing is my own).A Birmingham MP has been called ‘misguided’ over his ‘idiotic’ suggestion that social housing tenants should get a lodger to avoid paying the bedroom tax.
Lib Dem MP for Yardley John Hemming suggested that with few one-bedroom properties available in the city, tenants would do better to take someone in.Labour MPs from across Wales have rounded on the Government to attack the so-called bedroom tax and changes to housing benefits.
Shadow Welsh Secretary Owen Smith used Welsh Questions to attack the policy that Ed Miliband last month pledged to repeal if Labour wins the 2015 general election.
Domestic violence affects one in four women in their lives. Two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner and three quarters of a million children in the UK witness domestic violence every year.
The introduction of the bedroom tax is having an unacceptable and dangerous impact on women who have experienced domestic violence, and councils must take action.
A WOMAN who cannot share a bedroom with her partner because of disability has won a landmark ruling that reducing her welfare benefits under the bedroom tax is a breach of her human rights.
The woman, who has multiple sclerosis, won her appeal against Glasgow City Council’s decision to apply the 14 per cent deduction for her “spare” bedroom at a tribunal hearing.
Adults and children with disabilities who are challenging the government’s bedroom tax have been granted permission to take their fight to the Court of Appeal after losing a High Court challenge earlier this year.
Giving his reasons for granting an appeal hearing, the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Aikens said that the cases "raise issues of public importance concerning the amended housing benefit scheme and the needs of disabled/ young people and so should be considered by the Court of Appeal. Further, the points raised in the grounds of appeal and the proposed ‘skeleton’ argument have a reasonable prospect of success.”
‘Bizarre’ government guidelines place onus on landlords not local authorities to define a bedroom
Government guidance issued to local authorities this week on how to classify a bedroom for the purposes of the bedroom tax has been panned as ‘bizarre’ and ‘wrong’ by experts.
More than 50,000 people affected by the so-called bedroom tax have fallen behind on rent and face eviction.
The statistics reveal the scale of debt created by the Government’s under-occupancy charge, as one council house tenant in three has been pushed into rent arrears since it was introduced in April.
More than half of families hit by the government's controversial bedroom tax have been pushed into debt, new research has revealed.
A survey of 51 English housing associations by the National Housing Federation (NHF), found that 51% (32,432) of residents affected by the widely condemned under-occupancy policy have been unable to pay their rent between April and June.