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.
A majority of private landlords have rejected the Government’s welfare reform plans for housing benefit, saying there will not be enough accommodation available.
Releasing details of a survey of over 1,000 landlords across the UK, the Residential Landlords Association and the Scottish Association of Landlords found that 65.2% of respondents do not support the Government’s plans for Universal Credit.
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.
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.
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.
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.