You though the bedroom tax was bad! The much worse benefit cap starts in 4 weeks!!

A maximum of £500 per week in total or overall benefit payments sounds a lot.  It is a lot.  Yet this overall benefit cap won’t save the public purse money at all, in factit will cost much more and as much as £1 BILLION per year more and the policy should be abandoned for the sake of the country’s finances!

In 4 short weeks time this overall benefit cap begins and this is not only bad for tenants and housing like the bedroom tax it will cost the taxpayer more.  It is a stupid and reckless policy based on political dogma with no economic rationale at all.

First to note is that we already have a national welfare benefit cap.  JSA is £71.70 wherever you live.  The overall benefit cap includes Housing Benefit however and rents vary dramatically across the country and so the overall benefit cap is a policy to reduce Housing Benefit, and indeed that is how it will work.

Second to note is how it operates.  The £500 per week is the starting point from which welfare benefits are deducted and this leaves a maximum amount of benefit which becomes the maximum housing benefit to be paid. So if a family gets £300 per week in welfare benefits the maximum it can receive is £200 per week in housing benefit. The table below shows how much welfare benefits a family receive and also how much they will be left towards their rent.

Thirdly, the DWP has sent letters out to 88,840 families between May and October 2012 stating they will get hit by the overall benefit cap.  The same DWP state the average reduction in weekly benefit is £93 per week at 2012 figures.  The bedroom tax average by comparison is £14 per week.  The benefit cap thus presents a seven times greater likelihood of non-payment of rent and a seven times higher risk of the tenant being evicted and becoming a homeless family.  In fact homelessness through eviction for arrears is inevitable with the overall benefit cap whether the tenant family lives in social housing or private housing.

Fourthly, the DWP say 46% of these families hit by the overall benefit cap (OBC) live in social housing so about 41,000 live in council or housing association properties and 48,000 live in the private rented sector or PRS. This is not a high private rent issue that only affects London!

The OBC will have a devastating impact and a far greater one for the tenant, for the landlord and for the taxpayer than the bedroom tax.  It will see far more evictions for arrears and will see a huge increase in families made homeless and these families will in turn create a huge taxpayer and public purse cost for the homelessness the OBC creates. 

The general public who have been so outspoken against the bedroom tax policy which has seen this remain in the news month after month know little about the OBC and its impacts and I begin to address the impacts here. 

As I state above we already have a national welfare benefit cap and the amount of welfare benefit a family receives is the same national and depends on thee make up of the family.  Table 1 below shows these amounts and also shows how much the OBC leaves to pay for rent through Housing Benefit (HB) in social housing or through Local Housing Allowance (LHA) for a private tenant.

Table 1 – Welfare Benefits and HB/LHA under the overall benefit cap

 

Family composition	Welfare Benefits	Max HB/LHA payable
1 parent and 2 children – 1P2C	£220.50	£279.80
2 parent and 2 children – 2P2C	£261.35	£238.65
1 parent and 3 children – 1P3C	£286.20	£213.80
2 parent and 3 children – 2P3C	£327.05	£172.95
1 parent and 4 children – 1P4C	£351.91	£148.09
2 parent and 4 children – 2P4C	£392.76	£107.24
1 parent and 5 children – 1P5C	£417.62	£82.38
2 parent and 5 children – 2P5C	£458.47	£41.53
1 parent and 6 children – 1P6C	£483.33	£16.77
2 parent and 6 children – 2P6C	£524.18	NOTHING

1P2C household – A single parent with 2 children will have a maximum payment of £279.80 per week towards rent.  More than enough to cover rent in the vast majority of the country.  Yet if this household sees a mum and a teenage boy and girl in London living in a 3 bed flat with a typical weekly rent of £350 per week plus with a private landlord can they afford to find over £70 per week from welfare benefit to make up the shortfall in rent?  The obvious answer is no so they will be evicted for arrears and the local council will then have to place then in temporary accommodation costing £600 – £3000 per week.

The same will apply for any larger family and so we see that a family with 2 children or more living in a PRS property in London will be evicted for arrears and cost the taxpayer so much more. 

It also has the following general impacts: -

• A family on welfare benefits will not be able to afford a private rented property in the capital and so PRS landlords will not accommodate a family on welfare benefits. 
• As PRS landlords will not accommodate these families will either have to leave London and/or increased demand on social housing there. 
• If such a family is accommodated in high cost temporary homeless accommodation by a London council then they can only leave there to go to social housing in the capital

Also note well that the OBC creates a very perverse incentive to family life.  If you are a 2 parent household it is better in financial terms to ditch your spouse or partner as you then receive £41 per week less in welfare benefits yet a £41 per week better chance of keeping the roof over the head of you and your children!

Outside of London and in the PRS we see that the 2 parent and 3 child family will only receive a maximum of £172.95 per week or just under £750 per calendar month to pay towards rent.  The national average 3 bed PRS rent level is closer to £800 per month and the average 4 bed PRS rent level is £309 per week or £1340 per calendar month. Even a low-rent area such as Liverpool has an average 4 bed PRS rent level of £235 per week according to 2012 official VOA figures.  Can such a family afford a £61 per week rent shortfall?  The answer is no the 2P3C family cannot afford this figure which is over four times the average bedroom tax shortfall in Liverpool.

A general point is that PRS landlords can evict quickly and without any reason and a judge has no discretion in this.  So with an average shortfall of £93 per week nationally then a very high percentage of the 48,000 PRS families affected will be evicted for arrears and fall on the local council to place in temporary accommodation – at a hugely increased cost to the public purse.  Note too that  before the OBC commences we have about 53,000 homeless families nationally so the homeless figures will double with the benefit cap.  These families currently cost about £500m per year to the public purse and the OBC is expected to save £270m per year.  Go figure!!

Yet these numbers and huge public purse costs have yet to consider the social tenant affected and almost 41,000 have been given letters by the DWP to say they will be affected.  The same will happen to them as I outline will happen to the PRS tenants above which will add to the homeless numbers and to the public purse cost.  The ONLY difference is that it will be larger sized families.

Take the couple with 5 children (2P5C) who in just 4 weeks time will receive a maximum of £41.53 in Housing Benefit per week.  A 4 bed SRS property will have a rent level of £110+ even in a low rent area such as Liverpool.  Will such a family be able to find £70 per week or over £300 per month from their welfare benefits to make up the rent shortfall?  Of course not and so they will also be evicted and quickly by a social landlord.  They then add to the homelessness numbers and to the burgeoning public purse cost.

Yet there is one hugely significant additional consequence here with the ‘large’ family – Where the hell are they going to live?

To explain if the ‘large’ family in the cheapest form of rented housing cannot afford to live in the cheapest rented housing then they will remain in temporary costly homeless accommodation permanently!  There is nowhere for them to go as the council cannot place them in a council house as the same series of events, from arrears to eviction to homelessness, happens again.  So where the hell are such families to live? 

The options they have are stay in unsuitably temporary accommodation with all their children or (a) one parent gets a 30 hour per week job on the minimum wage or (b) the 2 parent 5 child family splits up into to households of 1P3C and 1P2C.

The latter point is yet another perverse incentive of the OBC.  If a large family household splits to form two smaller ones then they can avoid the cap. 

Logically a council would rehouse them in two 3 bed properties next door to one another and so avoid the much higher temporary homeless cost.  Yet of course no council could advise a family to split up and even if this happens we see a doubling of the HB claims as they are now on 2 properties whereas before they were on one.  The public purse cost increases yet again!!

The former and only viable solution according to the coalition is for one of the parents to take on a job and that is a key ‘nudge’ of the policy to change the behaviour of the benefit claimant.  A low paid job would see receipt of working tax credit that exempts them from the OBC.

Take the 2 parent 5 child household as an example.  Instead of having their overall benefits capped at £500 one of the parents takes a 30 hour per week job at £6.40 per hour (£192 per week gross) and they receive £524.09 in benefits plus the £184.66 wages for a total of £708.75 per week.  This is based on a rent of £120 per week and so previously this 2P5C family would have received £678.47 per week made up of £458.47 in welfare benefits and £120 per week in Housing Benefit. So they are £30.28 per week better off.  However, working they have to pay £8.11 per week in Council Tax whereas before they paid £2.12 and so they are better off by £25.29 per week…for working 30 hours!

If the travel to and other work costs exceeds £25.29 per week or just over £5 per day then the family is worse off financially and one partner is working 30 hours per week in a mundane job simply to stay in their accommodation, their family home.

I suspect not many families will see this as an incentive!!! 

Of course the last possibility is that one of the parents finds a job paying £53,000 per year gross which will see the family break even with their benefit payments of £678.47 per week plus £10 per day for work costs…not the jobs which grow on trees! Then again if by some miracle such a family found a job paying £53k per annum then Tory run Hammersmith & Fulham (zealous adherents of welfare reform who don’t think Coalition goes far enough) is proposing to charge more rent to social tenants earning over £40,200 per year and so such families would be worse off financially by getting such a job at this £53k salary.  These families would then likely be evicted for rent arrears for taking a £53k per year job!!  Yes reader this clearly is thought through and the Hammersmith & Fulham policy is called pay to stay (more correctly pay MORE to stay) and came from…yes you’ve guessed it ….the coalition who first mooted this 18 months ago and who want to introduce this as yet another of their hare-brained housing policies on a national scale!!

So in summary the overall benefit cap will cost the public purse about £1bn more each year and this gets worse each year as rents rise by more than the benefit cap figure.  What was that reader?  You thought a benefit cap reduced the welfare bill…Come on keep up!! Just because the coalition dream such policies up on the back of a fag packet doesn’t mean you have to have the same lazy superficial thinking!!  What about all those homeless families exported from London?  How about the more than doubling of the number of homeless families?  Numbers – well 89,000 or so families made homeless is about half a million men women and children or more than the population of say Liverpool…Yes that’s each and every year! 

You begin to get a picture of why the overall benefit cap is much worse than the bedroom tax now?  Good that’s the idea.  So all those activist techniques of keeping the horrors of the bedroom tax in the news will be honed and sharpened then?  Yes you have 4 weeks and that’s an age with social media.  You have some idea of why councils need to spend a hell of a lot more on benefit cap DHPs now than bedroom tax DHPs?  You see why councils spend a hell of a lot more DHPs on private tenants? 

What was that again?  You thought the bedroom tax was bad?  It is but nowhere near as bad as the overall benefit cap as you now see.  Perhaps all the social landlords that are so blasé about it and were all of 2012 when I wrote repeatedly the benefit cap will see more evictions than the bedroom tax and it hits landlords finances even more than it?  Worse than that is the LGA, the umbrella body for all local councils.  The huge transfer of costs the benefit cap gives from central to local government has seen a LGA response deafening in its silence.  They didn’t even pick up that local councils will have to spend at least £400m more in HB as their proportion of the added costs of coalition welfare reforms this year that is hidden away here in the Autumn Statement of 2012 and I discussed in December 2012. 

That’s £400m per year on top of the extra costs that central government will have to give local government for the higher HB costs of temporary homeless accommodation by the way – yes additional to!!

Anyone left out there with an IQ of higher than minus 12 who thinks the benefit cap will cut the welfare bill?  If so the coalition are looking for new welfare policy workers!

Bedroom Tax Sighs – well in those councils!

A council, Welwyn & Hatfield, unilaterally decides any room with a floor space of less than 50 square feet is not a bedroom.  If one council can do this then so can every other council.

Bristol and Nottingham social landlords state the same.  If a couple of social landlords can do this they so can every social landlord.

The size of a room that qualifies as a bedroom has always been as controversial as the bedroom tax policy itself; more importantly it is the one issue social landlords would remain inside Pandora’s box, yet it has now escaped and significantly so.  Yet the bedroom tax is a national policy that HAS to be applied equally across the country and cannot mean one thing in one area and another thing in another area.

Yet HB regulations don’t work that way and shouldn’t.

We have a classic example of that at the moment with a council in Anglesey ruling that a night shelter is not eligible to receive Housing Benefit and this decision after going through the tribunal process has seen other councils withdraw HB for night shelters in Blackpool and Salford.  That is how the HB system works (and despite this being an outrageous ruling.)

The Welwyn case is very significant indeed.  Just the fact that the council recognises it is their decision is significant as many councils have stated errantly that it is up to the landlord to define a bedroom and the number of them, something those same Councils know is not the case for private landlords – and of course the HB regulations can’t apply differently for a private landlord and a social landlord on such a matter of principle.  Yet Council after Council have disingenuously stated it is up to the landlord in response to bedroom tax policy challenges from tenant claimants and because it was easier and very much cheaper for Councils to merely accept the landlords word when they made the decisions.

This is one major reason why I have always maintained the bedroom tax decision-making process was and is a sham and why every tenant claimant has legitimate grounds to appeal the bedroom tax on this sham process.

Social landlords have largely adopted a we want our cake and eat it position – they want the flexibility to reclassify down the bedroom number in difficult to let properties (KHT, Leeds etc) as the bedroom tax makes them impossible to let properties, yet are fearful of council HB departments doing their job and classifying them in this way.  Make no mistake what is a bedroom and how many bedrooms a property has - the two determinations the bedroom tax policy necessitates -are decisions for council HB officers and nobody else.

Yet that social landlord position and errant Council responses are both duplicitous and cannot hold.

Whether social landlords like it or not, reclassification is now a huge live issue across social housing and social landlords have a decision to make.  Do they embark on a widescale reclassification as I advocated they should and would be in their financial interests to do so; OR do they sit back and allow their local Councils to decide each case on its merits?  The latter could also see Councils deciding that any room 50 to 70 square feet is half a bedroom and could leave HB departments free to reduce rents.  That is a nightmare scenario for social landlords who want to keep control of rent setting policy by ensuring that their rents are met by Housing Benefit.

I see widescale reclassification as inevitable for social landlords and they can’t take the huge risk that Councils will reclassify for them.  It may only be 2 or 3% of social landlord stock which has rooms smaller than 50 square feet and despite this being about 100,000 properties if Councils were to rule that 50 to 70 square feet is only half a bedroom then this may affect 20% to 30% of properties – as many as a million social homes.

This is where social landlords have been disingenuous too in the bedroom tax.  They have given the impression they cannot reclassify as they will lose the full rent differential between a 3 bed and a 2 bed if they did reclassify.  That argument has always been a nonsense.  There is rightfully a difference between a 2 bed and a 2 bed with a small boxroom and a 2 bed with a large boxroom and that size difference has to be reflected in the amount of HB that a Council will pay.

So something has to give and the bedroom tax decisions have to be looked at again.

The bedroom tax decisions were a sham and were evidence of an ease of administrative cost approach by councils and landlords and worked, they thought, to their mutual financial advantage.  Yet these will now work to their cost as all challenges and appeals that have cited bedroom size may likely be upheld as by the day more and more councils look at this issue and rule they are not bedrooms.

I note today the Sunday papers are saying “A series of councils are now classifying rooms of under 50 sq ft as box rooms – sparing tenants from the tax” and while Sunday papers views can often be taken with a pinch of salt with their wide journalistic licence it is of note that they say correctly that COUNCILS are classifying not landlords.

It only takes one tribunal ruling in any town or city to say the bedroom tax decision was wrongfully taken by a council not looking at the size of a bedroom to mean all council decisions in any town or city were wrongfully decided.  It only takes one tribunal ruling to say that the council holding to a line of it is up tot the landlord to define to be proved as the nonsense it is and always was for all decisions in that area to be found against.

Yes the bedroom tax is a mess for councils and landlords which they brought on themselves by ignoring bedroom size.  Councils never asked landlords for this information which they should have (or for other information such as whether a claimed ‘bedroom’ contained a gas fire or boiler) and so councils took decisions in ignorance of the facts and they cannot hold. Landlords never volunteered this information and didn’t provide it and instead relied on a wing and a prayer of the 1985 Act not being included as statutory interpretation or ignorance or denial of the 1998 HSE guidance by councils and others legislation and guidance.

Now how can Coventry City Council and social landlord Midland Heart I am reliably informed maintain that a room measuring 8 feet 2 inches by 4 feet 3 inches, a whopping 35 square feet, is a bedroom?  Of course they cannot when councils are ruling anything under 50 square feet cannot be a bedroom!  That case explains better than any narrative just how much landlords and councils colluded in the bedroom tax and simply sought to shaft the tenant at thee bottom of the pile.  It always has been bloody offensive.

The tenant has said enough is enough and kicked up a fuss, a deserved fuss, and the tide is changing greatly.  Yes it is the coalition policy that created this farce, a pernicious and bad policy at that, but that doesn’t excuse landlords and councils from shafting the tenant.

The Welwyn position is the beginning of the end of the bedroom tax and not before time!

Tory council rebels against the bedroom tax – the beginning of the end?

The 1985 Housing Act section 326 (c) reads: -

No account shall be taken for the purposes of either Table of a room having a floor area of less than 50 square feet.

To put into ordinary everyday language a room can NOT be a bedroom if it has a floor area of less than 50 square feet.

Now see below a report from the Welywn & Hatfield Times which is a lot more interesting that it first appears.

• Here we see a Conservative dominated council (34 out of 48 seats) coming out against the bedroom tax – very significant.

• Secondly, this is the parliamentary constituency of Grant Shapps MP (aka Sebastian Fox and Michael Green) the former Housing Minister and now Chairman of the Conservative Party – very significant indeed!!

• Thirdly, Welwyn Hatfield has the highest percentage of social housing in the country in terms of Housing Benefit claimants with some 87% of HB claimant sin social housing compared to the national average of 67%.  If the bedroom tax downsizing agenda can’t work there it can’t work anywhere!

The article:

A reclassification set to be discussed today (Thursday) could see officials try to circumvent controversial benefit reforms. Roughly 100 three bedroom houses look set to be classed as two bedroom homes, as one of the rooms is less than 50 square feet. Under plans being weighed up, the third bedroom would be classed as a box room – meaning tenants will not be hit in the pocket.

A government shake-up means benefit claimants now receive lower payments if they have a spare room in their council or housing association-owned home. More than 800 households have been affected in Welwyn Hatfield. Several other four-bed homes will be relabelled as three bedroom properties.

Conservative councillor Roger Trigg, executive member for housing, said:

“We think some 50 square feet is small enough to not be a bedroom, it might be enough for a little computer study. “I think it is unfair to the tenants when it is that small to call it a full size bedroom when it comes to the bedroom tax – if I am allowed to call it that, the spare room subsidy.”

Condemnation of the Conservative-led cuts united leaders of the opposition parties, with both the Lib Dems and Labour anticipating the changes. Labour group leader Kieran Thorpe said:

“The bedroom tax is bad enough without being classed as a box room. “It is wrong to punish people for having an empty cupboard and it shows the amount of extra work that this council is having to do in dealing with this unfair piece of legislation.”

Lib Dem group leader Tony Skottowe said:

“This was almost inevitable given the legislation. “When you look at the legislation, there is going to be some impact, and some of the legislation is frankly daft – some of it is really quite silly.”

This really is significant if the true blue Tory councils come out against it.  Yes part of me wants to forgive the Tory councillors for trying to get some PR on this when the law has stated for 28 years that anything under 50 square feet cannot be called a bedroom, but hey this would appear to be the beginning of the end for the bedroom tax…as even Tories label this pernicious policy!!

UPDATE

• Tory Councils more tenant friendly than Labour run ones anyone?  What a turn up for the books this and incredibly significant even if Welwyn & Hatfield don’t vote this through (which they may have already done as I write!)
• Now is the time for everyone opposed to the bedroom tax policy to start lobbying Labour Councils to not only match this under 50 square feet decision but to go one better and declare that any room between 50 and 70 square feet is in effect half a bedroom as the same 1985 Housing Act states.
• It is also the time to start lobbying every single social landlord to agree to this as well and reclassify all their properties accordingly.  As I outlined yesterday and again today this is in social landlords financial interests to do so

Bedroom Tax Arrears – Huge and why social landlords need a major rethink

The bedroom tax is in its 11^th week and social housing is already in chaos.  It doesn’t augur well for social housing in its entirety and that is not hyperbole or exaggeration.

The scale of the non-payment and part-payments of the tenant rent shortfall the bedroom tax creates is giving shockwaves in the boardroom of every social landlord.  Nobody predicted this level of arrears increases and it has surprised everyone.  While the early figures are just that, early, they are huge and if they continue then doubtless many social landlords will get into deep financial trouble and some WILL fold or be taken over by the larger groups.  Yet even they are not immune and while I doubt the huge 54,000 home strong Riverside group will go bust their early figures of 50% zero payment and 25% part payment are alarming. As are the figures for YHN in Newcastle or HHT in Halton both much smaller HAs and there are plenty of other examples too.

While it is easy to be a doom scaremongerer and take these early figures as evidence of impending crisis, there is genuine reason for alarm.  The bedroom tax is less financially damaging to landlords than the benefit cap and direct payment of HB to tenants.  Worse ‘reform’ is to come in other words.  These early bedroom tax figures are in the context of the added pressures these later reforms will bring and I doubt other contextual factors such as welfare benefit increase below inflation while household expenditure such as gas, food, electricity all are rising at higher than inflation have yet to fully kicked in.

Landlords response has, not surprisingly but stupidly in my view, been to ramp up arrears collection activities.  It is not stupid that landlords are doing this just the way they are going about it and this is one area where social landlords need to stop and think.  In fact social landlords really do need to think clearly and fully for the first time – I would say have a rethink ordinarily yet I don’t believe they thought about and considered the welfare reform impacts at all.

One example of this is the benefit cap which I repeatedly criticised social landlords and the entire social housing sector all last year for ignoring and appearing blasé about.  The DWP impact assessment from June 2012 says 46% of those affected live in social housing yet the strong impression social landlords gave and continue to give is that they believe this is ONLY a problem for private landlords and in high rent areas such as London.  That is an incredibly naive view and a very neglectful one.

The average cut for the 41,000 social tenants who have been sent letters by the DWP is £93 per week.  If the bedroom tax tenant household with its average £14 per week cut in HB cannot afford to make up a £14pw shortfall they don’t have a hope in hell’s chance of making up a £93 per week shortfall. In other words the benefit cap social tenant household is a guaranteed certainty to be evicted for arrears and very quickly and highly likely to be before the bedroom tax arrears evictions.

Social landlords whether HA, ALMO or Council cannot bear such high arrears losses and eviction of these benefit cap households is inevitable.  Yet one of the less considered impacts of this is how this will impact on the landlord to local Council relationship which needs to be good and strong for obvious reasons.

I have criticised the social landlord to Council relationship as being complicit in the bedroom tax decision making.  Councils simply took the word of social landlords on what a bedroom is and how many bedrooms each property has.  It was in the mutual financial interests of both landlords and councils to do this and that is undeniable whether you agree or not with my complicity argument.  Yet the benefit cap relationship is very different and while arrears evictions are in social landlords financial interests they add hugely to council homelessness costs and especially since Steve Webb is on record in parliament as saying families evicted for arrears caused by the welfare reforms that are out of their control – which the benefit cap reductions are – mean councils should find such families UNINTENTIONALLY homeless and therefore councils have a full homeless duty with its large associated costs.

Local Councils will – out of necessity – be pressurising social landlords not to evict such cases while recognising that landlords have little choice but to evict for arrears.  The landlord council relationship sours significantly because of this which does not bode well for social landlords then asking Councils to support development bids or in planning permission terms etc., which it has to do.

I also predict strongly that tenants will start targeting social landlords more and burdening them with higher costs as the ‘reforms’ really start to bite.  Why did my landlord choose to give property information to the Council when it did not have to provide anything at all? As tenants become increasingly aware of bedroom size arguments ala 1985 Housing Act, or HSE 1998 guidance over gas appliances and other potential appeal challenges then tenant will step up ‘pressure’ on social landlords.

How long before tenants who maintain they have 2 bedrooms and a boxroom and not 3 bedrooms as their landlord says, begin to write to landlords to say they believe their rent is too high and should be reduced.  If their “3 bed” rent is £90 per week and a 2 bed rent is £80 per week will tenants write and offer to only pay £85 per week of the £90 per week the social landlord wants?  In fact many Councils are telling bedroom tax tenants to take up the number of bedrooms their property has with their landlords and not them.  So tenants would only be doing what their Councils tell them to do!

How long before tenants mitigate and nullify the social landlords’ response to the bedroom tax arrears collections?  Every landlords policy says something to the effect that the landlord will ramp up evictions where the tenant “refuses to engage” with them or very similar wording.  Yet tenants are very angry at letter after letter, phone calls, text messages and unannounced visit from ‘income officers who then errantly and unlawfully claim to have a legal right of entry and then again claim to have a legal right to do a financial statement of means on the tenant finances.  All any tenant has to do to show they are engaging and not burying their heads in the sand is to write to the landlord stating all correspondence between the parties can only happen by letter and not by calls, texts or visits as such landlord recovery actions may end up in court?

The tenant would also be wise to tell the landlords they have appealed the bedroom tax decision and have applied for a DHP and any shortfall in rent payments from them is because they can’t afford to pay and not because they are a ‘wont payer.’

These are obvious and simple matters that tenants will start to do if they haven’t already and they nullify landlords intentions to get ‘financial statements’ or generally to scare tenants into paying and also many of these matters will increase landlords costs as they will have to respond in writing.

Also when I drafted the template letter with 6 questions for tenants to ask of their Councils, most Councils refused to answer two key questions – what information did Councils request of landlords and what did the landlord respond with.  Tenants need such information for their appeals and they will be asking for that necessary and reasonable information now from landlords.  Again this costs landlords more and more and if landlords don’t supply then tenants will merely see their landlord blocking their legitimate appeal challenges – not good for the landlord tenant relationship at all…and especially not before tenants take control of rent payments by having HB directly paid to them from October as another of the welfare reforms this coalition has imposed.

Yet that is the real rub – the coalition imposed these pernicious welfare reforms on tenant, landlord and council and now all three are infighting with one another while the coalition sits back and smirks at this!

The tenant can’t pressurise the coalition directly yet needs to pressurise it via landlord and local council and the judiciary by appealing in huge numbers.  The tenant, the landlord, the councils and the judiciary all despise the bedroom tax and the rest of the coalition welfare reforms yet instead of all uniting against reforms they end up infighting!!

That infighting can only increase unless radical change by landlords and councils take place and they stand behind the surprisingly large and increasingly powerful tenant bloc which has emerged.  If it doesn’t the tenant will blame landlords and local councils who also have been shafted by these ‘reforms’ just as the tenant has.  The coalition nullified the Lords, the Commons, Local Government and Landlords with the bedroom tax and didn’t believe that tenants had any power or they were not a threat to them.  Yet with reliably over 40,000 members the anti bedroom tax groups have twice as many members as the CIH for example and the 40,000 figure is a conservative one and growing and will grow even further once the benefit cap hits in just over 4 weeks time and when monthly and direct payments kick in 10 weeks later.  By that time the full impacts of paying council tax for the first time, below inflation benefits rises and much higher than inflation household expenditure in food and utilities will have kicked in too.

The infighting can go on for tenants yet it can’t for landlord and council.  That is a reality that should send even more chills into social landlord boardrooms and councils.

Social housing as a model has been targeted with the welfare ‘reforms’ and especially as the bedroom tax and benefit cap only cut Housing Benefit not welfare benefit levels.  Yet social landlords’ responses and considerations of its impacts have been unfortunately inept.  While the NHF as one umbrella group has done some good work the CIH the professional body has been woeful and that is giving it too much praise.

Yesterday I posted a reworking of an earlier blog from January which said social landlords should reclassify as this will mitigate and nullify the bedroom tax within two years and not take 5 or 7 or even longer for the ridiculous downsizing suggestion to take place.  It is in social landlord’s best financial interests to do so.  It needed restating not because of Professor Steve Wilcox stating the same argument in May and lending his gravitas to the argument, but primarily because the bedroom tax arrears had been so unexpectedly high and makes it a necessity.

Take the claimed three bed property at £90 per week that could (and should be described) as a 2 bed plus large (50 -70sq/ft) boxroom.  This wouldn’t see a reduction to a 2 bed only rent of say £80 per week and a £10 pw reduction – it could and should be reclassified as an ‘enhanced’ 2 bed rent of say £87 per week.  The nominal £3 per week loss takes away the average £14 per week bedroom tax and the £3 can easily be made up through rent increases over the next two years.  The 2 bed and small (ie under 50 sq/ft) boxroom is still more than a mere 2 bed alone property and so reclassified and rented at say £84 per week.  Again this nullifies a £14 per week bedroom tax risk and again the £6 per week nominal loss can easily be recouped over two years.

Yet social landlords are loathe to do this as they errantly believe they cannot do it o that the HB regulations say it can’t be done or as YHN errantly said there are “strict government rules” which prevent this!  Utter nonsense and if anyone cares to tell me which government “rules” these are then let me know as the don’t exist except in social landlords minds or in their PR spin they issue as news releases.

Bristol and Nottingham have already (albeit post April 2013) decide that anything under 50 square feet is a bedroom.  Why don’t all landlords follow suit and do so as I explain above – the bedroom tax financial threat and tenant arrears threat go away and much more quickly than the current unfortunately conservative and naive response of the social landlords.

Why oh why landlords and councils see a need to infight with the similarly shafted tenant is beyond me and beyond any sensible comprehension.  Social landlords should sit around a table with tenants and anti bedroom tax (ABT) groups and listen and learn – and yes it is a two-way street.

About six weeks ago one such ABT group rather cheekily rang me late one Tuesday afternoon asking if I could make a Thursday morning meeting with KHT they had arranged.  I could re-arrange my schedule but made it dependent on KHT saying this was acceptable – I had criticised them specifically over the publicity they sought (brownie points if you will) for reclassifying 4% of their stock which were difficult to lets.  KHT had no problems with me being there which was good and professional.

The meeting saw me and 4 ABT members and from KHT there was Bob Taylor the CEO and the Director of Customer Service , Director of Housing and a minute take – a turnout of the key executive management team and impressive.  The meeting was scheduled for an hour and was an extremely open and honest meeting that lasted 2.5 hours – more impressive and clear evidence of how serious KHT viewed the meeting.

Both ‘sides’ learnt a lot!  The ABT group discovered that KHT like all landlords had been lobbying government more than expected.  They also realised that despite their preconceptions social landlords do have limited influence and got most of the fact that social landlords can be hamstrung in terms of challenge given the restrictions charitable status has for anything remotely seen as political activities.

KHT, while having communicated with tenant groups and their housing officers individually with individual tenants – the same as all HAs – heard some incredibly moving tales of what the bedroom tax meant.  Many of the impacts of it became much clearer as did the impacts it would have for tenants and for KHT as landlord.  Many issues were talked in depth rather than in superficial terms which most landlords do as they don’t have such meetings.  For instance KHT stated the often heard position that they are seeking to sort out the cant payers from the wont payers – a typical statement all landlords have said.  Yet landlords don’t elaborate on that incredibly difficult even in theory statement whereas the meeting discussed it in some detail which was mutually beneficial.

I won’t go into any more detail than that except to say the meeting resulted in the ABT group having a lot more understanding of the landlord’s lot and the landlord having a lot more understanding of the tenant’s lot.  A few days later KHT issued what was then the most damning news release to date about the bedroom tax.

I receive about 60 unsolicited emails from tenants about the bedroom tax right across the country every day. Mostly they alert me to ‘bad’ social landlord practise or bad council practise and if I get enough of similar stories which I can verify I do tend to publish such stories through the blog.  Landlords doorstepping techniques and ramped up arrears collection to Councils stating tenants have no right of appeal or other ‘dirty tricks’ etc.  I have heard no such stories from Knowsley where KHT is by far the largest landlord and Knowsley also has the largest percentage of bedroom tax affected households in the North West.  Anyone see a link there?

Landlord and councils fighting with tenants has to stop and both, but especially social landlords need to totally rethink their welfare reform strategies.  They need to work WITH tenants and harness the power tenants have and not work AGAINST tenants. Councils need to do the same.

As I said above and now finish with tenants can afford to continue their fight against landlords and councils.  All the tenant can do is fight to persuade landlord and councils to stand behind them and have nothing to lose by doing so.  If that is the only way they can get landlord and council ‘onside’ – and all have the same ultimate cause then they will continue to do so and with ever greater pressure.  Yet landlords and councils can’t afford to carry on fighting tenants and especially landlords.

Esther McVey and the OED

I am seriously contemplating whether to ask the OED to include a new verb called “to mcvey” be included in the next edition to mean to knowingly mislead the general public and parliament.   Then Esther McVey, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will have what all MPs seek – her name in political history.

Her latest set of porkies is in her local newspaper, the Wirral Globe, which used to be my local paper when she accuses the Labour Councillor of being alarmist and scaremongering by saying the bedroom tax will lead to increased homelessness. It is her use of deliberate untruths to substantiate her opinion that is the issue – something which Esther McVey is very fond of doing despite knowing her statistics and figures are patently false.  One cannot accuse a minister at the DWP of not knowing official DWP statistics after all, yet she constantly uses false and misleading statistics to assert her views, in short she mcveys!

In response to Cllr George Davis’ claims the Wirral Globe reports the following: -

However Miss McVey said housing benefit needed to be changed to prevent the bills increasing. She said: “I found Cllr George Davies’ words alarmist and scaremongering at the least. “Over the last three years the Government’s contribution to discretionary housing payments for Wirral have more than tripled and almost doubled from last year – 2011/12 it was £282,981, by 2012/13 it rose to £522,238 and for 2013/14 it will be £917,214.

“The Government needed to reform housing benefit because it doubled under Labour and stood at £24bn in 2012/13, this is double the amount spent on policing in England and Wales.

Housing Benefit doubled under Labour McVey?  The HB bill in 1997/98 when Labour took office was £12.2bn.  When they left in May 2010 it stood at £20.8bn.  That is an increase of £8.6bn or 70% – it did not double.  Yes that is a large rise in 13 years reader I agree just as I agree the Housing Benefit bill needs reform and cutting.

However the Housing Benefit bill under the Tories stood at £3.8bn in 1986/87 and rose to £12.2bn in May 1997.  The HB bill MORE THAN TRIPLED under the previous Tory administrations yet McVey conveniently omits this fact.  So not only has McVey knowingly misled the local electorate she has also knowingly left out the fact that her party’s record was over 4.5 times worse than the last Labour government she so decries.

Esther McVey has a history of misleading parliament too over the bedroom tax which she calls the spare room subsidy and despite the fact it can only be applied on a spare ‘bedroom’ and not any spare room such as a toilet which is also a room along with a pantry or a scullery.

Yet the bedroom tax is where McVey really omits key facts and constantly states known porkies as purported facts.  In February this year she overtly misled parliament by stating that there are 1 million spare bedrooms in social housing paid for by the taxpayer.  Aside from the fact that this government knows and publishes figures to show (a) under occupation in social housing is 10% yet it is 16% in the private rented sector or 60% higher (English Housing Survey), and (b) that we the taxpayer pay £2.17 billion per year more to private tenants for the same number of properties in Housing Benefit – both very pertinent errors of omission and commission by McVey – there cannot be 1 million spare bedrooms in social housing paid for in Housing Benefit.

This is one of those myths that cannot be borne out at all as I now explain.

The DWP states the bedroom tax affects 660,000 under occupying households.  Of these 540,000 under occupy by 1 bedroom and the other 120,000 by 2 or more bedrooms – all from the DWP official estimate in their impact assessment dated June 2012.

540,000 homes with 1 spare bedroom gives 540,000 spare bedrooms obviously.

Yet for there to be 1,000,000 spare bedrooms in total the other 120,000 homes need to have 460,000 spare bedrooms between them or 3.7 spare bedrooms each on average.  To have 3.7 bedrooms spare in 120,000 houses means there must be at least 120,000 social housing properties each having 5 bedrooms and also claiming Housing Benefit.  Yet there are not 120,000 5 bed properties in social housing let alone all claiming Housing Benefit.

Yet such clear and unambiguous facts don’t deter McVey from misleading parliament and knowingly so back In February when she said:

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) questioned the number of spare bedrooms. There are 1 million spare bedrooms in properties occupied by working-age people alone, so that does not include pensioners.

The reason for the clarification was that pensioners are allowed as many spare bedrooms as they like and Housing Benefit will pick up the tab.  Pensioners are exempt from the bedroom tax.

In the same debate McVey who is also responsible for disability and referred to as the Minister for Disability also said in regards to the bedroom tax that: -

The hon. Members for Dundee East and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) asked about people with a disability who need an overnight carer. Obviously, they are exempt, regardless of whether they need an overnight carer all the time or just occasionally. Again, Opposition Members got their facts wrong.

No McVey it is you who has her facts wrong and alarmingly so given you are the Minister for Disability.  It is only a tenant or the tenant’s partner who is allowed a spare room for an overnight carer.  If you have a child or adult in the household who is not the tenant they do NOT qualify for a spare room for an overnight carer – and given you have constituents who have been caught out by this and have written to you yet received no reply (!!!!) you should know this too.

Further the claimed exemption you say they have is not guaranteed at all.  It is up to each local Council to decide and also it DOES matter how often overnight care is provided so again you have this wrong.  Yes reader we can add incompetence and not knowing her own brief to deliberate peddling of mistruths and misleading parliament.

In the same parliamentary debate she said: -

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) reminded Labour Members what they had repeated time and again. They must get a grip of the housing benefit bill. They never managed to do that in government, but they must do it if they are to be even a credible Opposition.

Yet as I state above McVey conveniently omits that the Housing Benefit bill rose 4.5 times under the previous Tory government than the previous Labour one!

McVey also discussed discretionary housing payments in general terms in the parliamentary debate by saying the government has increased these yet she mentions the total DHP bill and DHPs are not just for the bedroom tax shortfalls – a very clever and repeated trick this coalition uses.  In fact the allocation for DHPs when looked at in the Housing Benefit circular S1 of 2013 reveals that just one-sixth of the total amount nationally – £25m out of £150m is allocated for the bedroom tax.

Let’s examine that in the case of Wirral and you will recall she told the Wirral Globe: -

Over the last three years the Government’s contribution to discretionary housing payments for Wirral have more than tripled and almost doubled from last year – 2011/12 it was £282,981, by 2012/13 it rose to £522,238 and for 2013/14 it will be £917,214

This financial year we see the overall DHP amount to Wirral has increased by £384,976 (from £522,238 to £917,214) and this needs to cover the new shortfalls this year of (a) the bedroom tax; (b) the benefit cap and (c) the increase in private sector tenant count  in Wirral.

(a) Wirral has 3816 households at an average shortfall of £14 per week which makes £2.79m this year as one new element the £395k has to deal with.

(b) Then Wirral has 350 households hit with a benefit cap shortfall of £93 per week – a further £1.7m – although this only comes in from August and so in this financial year it is £0.99m making a total so far of £3.78m

So even if Wirral MBC spent all their DHP money on just the bedroom tax and benefit cap shortfall taken out of the system by the coalition then 89 out of every 100 who will get a Housing Benefit deduction this year won’t get a DHP.

You should also note that the 350 households in Wirral who have all received a letter from the DWP stating they will be hot by the benefit cap will become homeless this year.  A £93 per week deduction will mean they cannot afford rent and they will be evicted whether their landlord is a social landlord or a private one.  That transfers the cost of accommodating 350 new families only Wirral Council yet the Council does NOT have 350 properties available and so will need to source hotel or B&B accommodation and have to pay for this.  This could easily cost £5m per year to the Council.

So as well as McVey giving false information, deliberately omitting information, knowingly misleading her constituents and parliament, McVey is clearly wrong on the homeless impact of her government’s reform and again omits the huge cost this places on the local Council.

Note too that in terms of DHPs the government has reduced Housing Benefit to private tenants – known as LHA – in Wirral this year by an average of 1.53% while landlords have increased private rents in the North West by 3.9%.  So many more private tenants will be seeking a DHP for this shortfall which if not paid by Wirral Council will likely see the private tenant evicted and then become an additional homelessness cost to the Council.

The vast majority of DHPs goes to private tenants and about 68% nationally.  This may even be a higher figure in Wirral as here we see 46% of all HB claimants being private tenants when the national average is just 32%.  There are also circa an additional 300 private HB claimants in Wirral in the last year too.

Bedroom Tax – Landlord – reclassify all properties you financial idiot!

Social landlords should not only reclassify, they should reclassify all their properties and is very much in their financial interests to do so. Yet social landlord after social landlord is coming up with every excuse in the book not to do this and some of them are even creating fictitious government “rules” which say disallows this.  Shame on you YHN in Newcastle! There are no such rules and social landlords imply don’t have the will to reclassify despite the fact it is in their financial interests, as well as the tenant financial interests, if they do.

Here I look at how they should reclassify ‘smartly’ and why this is in the mutual financial interests of landlords and tenants.

Ever had to book a room in a hotel?  I’m sure all will be familiar with this and it is used here to illustrate why all social landlords should reclassify all their properties in terms of bedroom number as a way of safeguarding the huge financial predicament the bedroom tax policy has created. A decade or so ago you could book a single room or a double room.  Now you can book a single room, an executive single room, a double room, an executive double room, a superior double room and a family room and even a triple room or a quad room.

Yet to rent a social housing property it is a 1 bed a 2 bed or a 3 bed et cetera, and this is inadequate and does not accurately represent what is being rented.  A 3 bed property with 3 double rooms is bigger than a 3 bed property with 2 double rooms and a single and bigger still than a 3 bed with 1 double and 2 singles.  And then within this we have alleged ‘bedrooms’ of less than 50 square feet and between 50 and 70 square feet which in overcrowding legislation are not a bedroom and half a bedroom respectively.

So if you are a tenant with a 3 bed property that has 3 double sized bedrooms you should be paying more rent than a tenant with 1 double and 2 single sized bedrooms.  That must be both right and fair.

A table below makes this line of argument easier and I have also included some example rental costs to reflect the average cost difference between a 2 and a 3 bed property in social housing.

Table 1

	Description	Now	After
A	3 bed property with 3 double rooms	£90	£94
B	3 bed property with 2 doubles, 1 single	£90	£92
C	3 bed property with 1 double  and 2 singles	£90	£90
D	2 double bed and large boxroom (50 – 70 sq/ft)	£90	£90
E	2 double bed and small boxroom (under 50 sq/ft)	£90	£86
F	2 bed, 1 double, 1 single and large boxroom	£90	£86
G	2 bed, 1 double 1 single and small boxroom	£90	£84
H	2 bed, 2 singles and large boxroom	£90	£84
I	2 bed both singles and small boxroom	£90	£82
J	2 bed both doubles no boxroom	£80	£80

Table 1 is illustrative and property types A through to I are all deemed 3 bedroomed properties yet vary drastically in their space.  Yet in HB terms and especially bedroom tax terms they are considered the same which is a total nonsense. I could have added 3 bed ‘parlour houses’ as they are often known which have additional living rooms which could make them 4 bed properties or still 3 bed ones – yet this merely emphasises the point that the current classification of rented properties just by the number of bedrooms is a nonsense and does not reflect what is being rented.

Put another way ask a tenant which of these types of “3 bedroomed” properties they would wish to rent at the same price and we would see 100% plump for Type A and none for Type I – Yet all are the ubiquitous “3 bedroomed” property for Housing Benefit purposes.

There needs to be a price differential between Types A through I yet in practice there is very little price difference charged by social landlords.  Reclassification is needed and along the same lines as the hotel room analogy I started with.

Reclassification could and would see Type A properties have a rent increase to reflect the additional good and property which is being rented.  Type I properties at the other extreme would see a reduction in rent charged.  Overall this protects social landlord incomes and also has the advantage of taking many now bedroom tax affected tenants out of the bedroom tax deduction and thus reduces the social landlords exposure to arrears risk.

I have attached some suggested alterations to the rent figures (again illustrative) which show that only types A, B and C remain as “3 bedroomed” properties but types D, E, F, G, H and I are between 2.0 to 2.99 bedrooms – These type D through type I properties would see tenant escape the bedroom tax altogether in 81% of cases as that is the DWP figures for those who under-occupy by 1 bedroom and the other 19% in these property types may see a fall from the 25% bedroom tax deduction down to a 14% deduction.

What this means is social landlord rental income would fall slightly in the first year yet would be readily and easily recovered through full application of the [(RPI+0.5%) + £2] formula in years two and onwards.  Types D through I can still be classed as “3 bedroomed” properties for asset value purposes and as their rental stream would quickly fall back in line with current levels the asset values would be largely unaffected as far as social landlords financiers are concerned.  This is smart reclassification which even Lord Freud called for back in May 2012.

Of course the same social landlords would have increased rental streams from types A and B as well.

Tenants and Housing Benefit – How can a tenant in a Type A or B property object to the rent increase?  They must recognise, as must the local council, that more rent is chargeable and fairly chargeable on a larger sized property.  Any such reclassification can and should and should have already been done on this basis and if it had then tenants would be happier as far less would be paying the bedroom tax, the social landlord would be happier as they would have avoided the enmity they are now receiving from tenants as well as reducing the financial risk of the bedroom tax.

Social landlords have often said it would take 5 years or 7 years and some 24 years for the bedroom tax downsizing (nonsense) argument to be resolved.  That is between 5 and 24 years of financial pain and threat of financial survival for social landlords.  The illustrative reclassification outlined above would see the financial risk to tenants and landlords overcome within 2 and at the outside 3 years. 

Social landlords are perfectly able to do this and central government would have little if any power to stop such as a “smart” reclassification.  Such a widespread sector wide reclassification is in the best financial interests and business survival interests of landlords AND tenants.

YET social landlord use trumped up and frankly ridiculous excuses not to do such a widescale reclassification.  YHN in Newcastle even state there are “strict government rules” to prevent this, when in fact no such rules exist at all.  Oh the rent setting regime only allows us to put a full integer in the box and so we can’t classify a property as a 2.5 bed property.  So get the rent setting software changed!  All of these are excuses and unacceptable ones.

I proposed the 2.9 bed property argument of which the above is a derivative back in January 2013.  Then last month Professor Steve Wilcox who is highly respected and rightly so for his expertise by all in housing proposed much the same argument in May 2013.  The ONLY thing stopping such as widescale reclassification is a lack of will by social landlords as the economics and business sense demonstrate it is the right thing for social landlords to do.

Finally, in terms of the bedroom tax, social landlords did NOT have any compulsion at all to provide any property data to local Councils who are the decision makers in HB, yet they did.  This not only means that social landlords chose to supply data, it also means social landlords have an obligation to provide accurate date in line with the rent charged on the property which is what paragraph 12 of the A4/2012 guidance says.

This assumes that the rent levels currently charged ARE accurate yet as I have pointed out above they are not and rent levels are broadly if not exactly the same for a type A property as they are for a Type I property.  In short rents are not accurate and do not accurately reflect what is being rented by tenants.  It’s about time and for their own survival that social landlords made sure rent levels are accurate and the only way for that to happen is widescale reclassification.

 

Bedroom tax – Councils lie upon lie over what a bedroom is in law

We all know the analogy of a child telling a little white lie and then an even bigger one and then still bigger ones to cover up the original lie.  That reminds me of what Councils have done with the bedroom tax decisions. 

Paragraph 12 of the A4/2012 guidance which all Councils quote back at tenant claimants says the government WILL NOT Be defining a bedroom in legislation which Councils conveniently took to mean there is no definition of what a bedroom is or even what a bedroom cannot be to mean a bedroom does not need to be or is defined in law.  Yet all paragraph 12 says is that the government won’t be making a FUTURE piece of legislation saying what a bedroom is – that is what WILL NOT BE means…and in everyday English too. That is the original Council little white lie they told themselves and they tell to the tenant claimant of HB.

The law does hold plenty of definition of what CANNOT constitute a bedroom, which amounts to the same thing, and Councils very conveniently indeed have chosen to ignore when making the bedroom tax decisions. This is much more than the 1985 Housing Act and bedroom size as I outline below.

Then the second part of paragraph 12 says, correctly, there is no definition of a minimum bedroom size in REGULATIONS.  Yet here Councils told another little white lie to themselves and to tenants as they interpreted this to mean that HB decision makers only have to ‘look at fact and not law’ and many Councils have said precisely that in their responses!!  How strange that the law is somehow not fact then? So what is the law? Non-fact? Lie?  Whatever it is Councils have disregarded it and of course they cannot do this despite protestations at this is not correct statutory interpretation.

Councils have trotted this line of argument out about the 1985 Housing Act saying that bedroom size does not matter.  They have also conveniently missed the fact that they themselves – Councils as a corporate body and note well Councils act as the agent for the DWP in HB decisions and as a CORPORATE BODY– have powers to prosecute landlords for renting out rooms which are too small and have done so recently here.

So Councils must KNOW that the size of rooms matter and all the bleatings and white lie upon white lie that Council HB departments state about the law and they do not have to regard the law and only fact (whatever the hell that means) is of course nonsense and a legal fiction too.

They also conveniently overlook that Councils as a corporate body still retain the legal duties for homelessness and cannot transfer them and that Councils have to conform to homelessness legislation and to guidance issued by the HSE  – both of these are interestingly contained here in an Ombudsman report from last October in which the Ombudsman expresses surprise that Councils do not know rooms sizes and other factors are pertinent and apply the laws.  The ombudsman found maladministration against York Council regarding bedroom sizes and the more general ‘sleeping accommodation’ aka a bedroom in this case.  A pertinent paragraph is: -

A room is available for sleeping accommodation if it is normally used as a bedroom or as a living room. Since October 1998 guidance from the Health and Safety Executive states that a room cannot be used as sleeping accommodation if it contains a gas fire, gas space heater or a gas water heater including a gas boiler.

That direct quote is very interesting as many Councils as well as saying there is no legal definition of a bedroom – which is in fact inaccurate – and have been saying a bedroom has its ordinary meaning – that of somewhere where one sleeps.  So you would have thought that Councils would have asked of landlords or indeed of tenants whether any of the alleged ‘bedrooms’ and even living rooms contained a gas water heater or gas boiler.  Yet of course they did not. Councils merely winged the bedroom tax decisions and didn’t ask the necessary questions of either the landlord or the tenant to determine the number of bedrooms each property has – the ease of administrative cost approach.

Of course some will say this means a living room can be deemed a bedroom and a tenant may in fact have MORE bedrooms and not less bedrooms in their property.  Correct – Yet that merely proves the point that Councils took an ease of administrative cost approach and didn’t do what they needed to do – decide on the the number of bedrooms correctly.  Both ways prove the Councils decision-making processes were and are a farce and legally unreliable.

All bedroom tax decisions that did not ask the relevant questions were made on assumption and a lack of genuine information and ignorance of the law – be that whether it is the size of a purported bedroom or whether it contains a gas water heater or boiler. 

Ignorantia juris non excusat 

What Councils have done in making the bedroom tax decisions is ease of administrative cost.  They have chosen to believe the landlords opinion of what a bedroom is and how many bedrooms a property has.  Councils have not, as they should have done verified that landlord data the received to be correct or not as it would have cost them too much to do so.  They also did not ask for the necessary information from landlord or tenant such as gas fires and gas boilers upon which to make the correct and legally reliable decisions.  

In short they do not KNOW that any given property has the number of bedrooms as the landlord says, they have merely assumed this to be correct  - though of course Councils as the decision makers have DECIDED to take the landlords word despite the landlord’s obvious and apparent vested interest.  It is not up to the landlords to decide as many Councils have stated – that is yet another white lie to compound this farce and the farcical and legally unreliable positions Councils are adopting to cover their tracks and incompetence.

Yes the child telling white lie after white lie really is a good analogy reader!

Even when they trot out the secondary white lies that a bedroom has its ordinary meaning not a legal one they fail to take account – as a corporate body – of what the HSE stated 15 years ago with regard to what sleeping accommodation cannot be. Just as the 1985 Act states what a bedroom cannot be, the HSE guidance states what a bedroom cannot be defined as – Yet Councils overlooked this.

So whether it is The 1985 Housing Act on overcrowding or the HMO guidance or the HSE guidance or The Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012 all Councils have been legally remiss in making the bedroom tax decisions as all of these give duties to all Councils on a corporate basis and cannot be ignored by the HB departments in each Council.  They would be incredibly strange statute and guidance if they exempted HB departments but applied to all other Council departments wouldn’t they!

Councils and especially Housing Benefit departments invariably rise to a high level of incompetence when making decisions – and the vast majority of HB error and far higher than fraud is made by Councils in HB decisions – yet in the case of the bedroom tax they have surpassed that.

All bedroom tax decisions are legally unreliable because of this and what we are now seeing is Councils knowing this and secondly refusing to answer reasonable questions asked of them by tenants.  The standard 6 questions I drafted included two which asked what did the Councils ask the landlords for and what did the landlords respond with.

The appellant needs to know whether the Councils asked about room size or room usage or whether rooms contained gas fires of boilers in order to challenge, yet Councils will not give up this information as presumably they know they have cocked up by not asking and would incriminate themselves.  Yet such requests from claimants, the tenants and appellants are perfectly reasonable ones to ask.  Council HB officers are now spitting out their proverbial dummy as the temerity of tenants asking for this reasonable information as a letter from Liverpool City Council below illustrates –

“All relevant information required has been issued. The Local Authority are not required to provide additional information for you to appeal and all relevant information has been provided.”

All RELEVANT information has been issued?  I didn’t realise that HB officers are now legal advisors to the tenant claimants and can decide what is relevant or not to their appeal!!!  And as these reasonable requests were for more information on and explanation of how the Council made the decisions and not an appeal, has the Council engaged Mystic Meg to advise Senior HB Officers on what grounds the claimants are going to appeal upon!!

This is the same Liverpool City Council who claimed these two reasonable questions were FOI requests as part of its dirty tricks campaign – which they apologised for here, and in person at a meeting I had with them a few weeks back and stated would change – yet still have not and now WILL not provide.  Oh dear!

Have a look at the tone of this LCC letter below as well – Yes it is very curt and dismissive isn’t it – and make sure you don’t miss how they have entitled this letter internally too.  Look at the bottom right-hand corner and you will see the words “HB Dispute Unsuccessful!” – Indeed!! Anyone think that the senior benefits officer didn’t realise this would print out on the tenants copy?  Ahem!