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The Department for Work and Pensions has today published a new guide for local authorities and social landlords to help them understand arrangements for the payment of housing benefit under universal credit for people in temporary accommodation.

Q. Why has the Department for Work and Pensions decided to make payments of the housing element in Universal Credit directly to claimants in temporary accommodation?  

Changes to housing benefit in England, Scotland and Wales are creating "financial hardship and distress" for disabled people, MPs have warned.

The reduction of payments for social tenants deemed to have a larger home than they need have hit vulnerable people not intended as targets, the Work and Pensions Committee said. 

Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell councils all overpaid, Slough was the highest in Berkshire with a £8 million overspend 

Reading Borough Council had overpaid more than £4 million in housing benefit by June last year, but only clawed back about £700,000. 

About 6% of social housing tenants in Britain affected by changes to benefits partly designed to cut under-occupancy have moved home, BBC research suggests.

Ministers claim the policy - dubbed the bedroom tax by critics - will free up big homes and save taxpayers £1m a day. 

The government's huge shake-up of the benefits system is pushing families in social housing into greater levels of debt as they struggle to cope and find work, a major study has revealed.

Tenants have seen the amount they owe increase since October, while almost half report having no money left each week once essential bills have been paid. 

A fed up mum is in dispute with Oldham Council after claiming she has wrongly been paying bedroom tax. 

Heather Crimes (59) lives in a three-bedroom house in Helvellyn Walk, Higginshaw. Her two children no longer live with her and she has had to pay an extra £21.64 a week for the spare bedrooms.  

The number of homeless families with school-age children being housed outside London by their local authorities has soared dramatically over the last four years.

Figures obtained by London Assembly Green Party member Darren Johnson show that 21 families were shifted outside the capital in 2010/11 but that the number had risen to 222 in the first three quarters of 2013/14 - a 1,000% increase. 

George Osborne has today announced a £119 billion cap on welfare spending.

As he laid out his budget in parliament, the chancellor said the £119 billion cap for 2015/16 would rise in line with inflation to £127 billion in 2018/19. 

Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions have been criticised by MPs for using language that "feeds into negative public views about benefit recipients".

In a report today, the DWP select committee said the Department need to "exercise care" in the language used  in press releases and ministerial comments.

Some working people are losing 97p of every £1 earned after being hit by a combination of welfare cuts, a committee of MPs has found. 

The public accounts committee warned today that cuts to council tax benefit means ‘work does not pay’ for those worse affected by the reforms.