Tenants saw private rents rise by 0.4% in October pushing the average rent across England and Wales to a new record high of £744 per month.
The latest increase means rents have now risen for seven consecutive months and are, on average, 3.4% higher than this time last year.
An exodus of benefit recipients from high to low cost neighbourhoods is a widely predicted side effect of the government's controversial welfare ceiling. This £26,000 annual limit, will force thousands to move to cheaper areas as the long-standing principle that housing payments should cover rent completely is dissolved by ministers next year, worried policy analysts claim.
Much less has been said about those who decide to stay put and struggle on. A report published by the Pro-Housing Alliance casts new light on the effect of diminished welfare support on a group officially accepted as the hardest hit by the cap: the 1.4 million private renters.
The minister for welfare reform Lord David Freud has admitted that a reduced cap on housing benefit could force families in high-value areas to move.
In a speech to the National Landlords Association yesterday, Lord Freud defended the government’s controverial welfare reform programme and reiterated that welfare reform was designed to take control of ‘spiralling welfare costs’.
A convicted loan shark has been ordered to pay back £100,000.
Derrick Morgan preyed on vulnerable adults in the Neath Port Talbot area of South Wales. He has already served a 12-month prison sentence for illegal money lending and benefit fraud.
The introduction of universal credit could leave many single-parent families facing a life in poverty because of rising private sector housing costs.
A study from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University found that the caps on how much benefit can be claimed under the new system will leave many worse off even if they take part-time work.
Over 75,000 British children will spend Christmas Day homeless, a charity has warned.
Shelter Scotland has published the figures to raise awareness of the plight of homeless people over the festive period.
London councils will be forced to ship thousands of families out of the capital – some as far away as Wales – after next April’s benefits cuts mean they are priced out of the private rental market.
A report by the Child Poverty Action Group and Lasa, a welfare rights charity, predicts that 124,480 London households will be hit by a combination of cuts to Local Housing Allowance, the new benefit cap which means no household can claim more than £26,000 a year in total, and under-occupation penalties.
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.