The Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) system has serious flaws causing "considerable distress and anxiety" and requires "fundamental redesign", the Work and Pensions Committee said in a report published today.
Simply "rebranding" the Work Capability Assessment (or WCA) used to determine eligibility for ESA by appointing a new contractor will not solve the problems, it said.
The Labour Party has accused the Liberal Democrats of ‘unbelievable hypocrisy’ over its change in stance on the bedroom tax.
The deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said that the Lib Dems no longer support the policy in its current form and now want an exemption for disabled people and for housing benefit to only be cut if households refuse an offer to move.
An agent who claimed nearly £4,900 in housing benefit despite renting out a house she co-owned has been given a 12 month community order and ordered to pay a total of £3,258 in costs and a victim surcharge.
Toni Wenlock from Rugby denies dishonestly making a statement to Rugby council in order to claim £4,830 in housing benefit; she also denies failing to tell the council of a change in her circumstances.
Discretionary housing help held back to stop bedroom tax ‘buy out’
Councils asking for additional cash to support tenants hit by welfare reform had their funding capped because the government believed they would buy their way out of the bedroom tax.
The government’s controversial bedroom tax has failed to ease under-occupancy in the social housing sector, its main aim, a report has revealed.
The 'Here and There: One year of the Bedroom Tax' report, composed by six housing associations, is the first to analyse a complete year’s data on the impact the under-occupancy policy has had on tenants.
Ministers’ attempts to slash fraud and error in the benefits system could be undermined because of uncertainty over how the housing element of universal credit will work, MPs have warned.
The work and pensions select committee said in a report today it was unclear how officials would be able to cross-check universal credit claims against other information to prevent benefit fraud and error.
The government has introduced rules meaning that long-term unemployed people will only receive benefits if they visit a job centre every day or take on six months of voluntary work.
Jobseekers that disobey the new rules will have their benefits stopped for four weeks for a first offence and 13 weeks for a second.
A housing association has offered tenants a free Crème Egg to thank them for paying the bedroom tax.
In a letter shared widely on Twitter today, Welsh landlord Valleys 2 Coast offered the confectionary ‘as a small thank you’ to affected tenants.
The housing benefit bill will reach a new high of £25bn a year by 2017, according to new government estimates.
The bill is estimated to have decreased by £425m last year, during which a number of welfare reforms affecting housing benefit took effect, but is set to increase again before reaching £25.4bn in real terms by 2019.
A controversial story recently broke about locals in Newham in receipt of housing benefits. Newham council was looking at sending families in receipt of DSS to other parts of the country as there were not enough landlords who were willing to accept such tenants. The controversial move should never have been necessary. The Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is set at the 30th percentile of local rents, which means that, in theory, three out of ten properties should be available to DSS tenants. In practice, many of the homes which should be readily available are owned by landlords who are unwilling to accept LHA dependent applicants, due to mortgage stipulations or social snobbery. However, if you’re in receipt of housing benefits, all is not lost…