Bedroom Tax – Is there 160,000 more affected?

The Bedroom Tax – The numbers just don’t add up.

If you have ever read any of my posts you will know I like numbers.  2 and 2 always equals 4 unless you are a typical politician when it equals 5 or if you name is Iain Duncan Smith and it equals minus 387,223 or plus 928,761.

So how many are affected by the bedroom tax and the benefit cap then?  That should be easy but it is not.  Worryingly it is a distinct cause for concern as I now explain.

Two days ago I put out a post about Coventry City Council saying the tenant could not appeal the bedroom tax decision.  What many will have missed in that post is the numbers.  A councillor there who is the chair of the welfare reform scrutiny board said in official minutes that 2552 in Coventry are affected by the bedroom tax.  The NHF breakdown by constituency says it is 2945.  The head of the Council’s HB team in a presentation on Coventry’s website says it is 3,200.  The local newspaper reporting on the Council apology say it is 3,000. So which figure is right? The difference between the Council’s official figure and the HB managers figure is a whopping 25% and 648 households in number.

Liverpool is another example and even worse and very worrying as the table below shows with the Council apparently underestimating the numbers by 1315 households or over 3,000 men women and children using 2.4 per household!

Constituency	CLB No:	NHF No:	Variance
Garston *	1484	1616*	132
Riverside	2637	2920	283
Walton	2399	2473	74
Wavertree	1262	2352	1090
West Derby	2583	2319	-264
TOTALS	10,365	11,680	1,315

Liverpool has 5 parliamentary constituencies as above and the National Housing Federation released figures of the numbers affected by constituency.  These are the ‘NHF No’ column above and they appear very reliable figures on a national scale as they total 659,987 and the DWP figure is 660,000 – a variance of 0.002%.  The preceding “CLB No” figures were released from Councillor Louise Baldock in Liverpool and are internal Council figures.  The difference is very significant with the NHF figures having 1,315 more households affected.  So the internal Council figures cannot be reliable.

Only the Liverpool Walton figure with a variance of 74 families comes within a 3% variance which even then is not really acceptable and Luciana Berger the MP for Liverpool Wavertree will be very concerned at the 46% variance between these two figures.  Is Liverpool City Council working on the basis there are 1090 fewer households affected by the bedroom tax in her Wavertree constituency than the actual number?

Liverpool City councillors have often used a figure of ‘about 11,000’ affected at public speeches and I accept that exact figures are difficult as the original government figure of 660,000 was from June 2012 almost a year ago and also because the Garston & Halewood constituency has 8 wards of which only 5 are in Liverpool and the other 3 being in neighbouring Knowsley Council.  Yet a difference of 1090 in one inner city constituency is patently not acceptable.

The council has to plan and react to the chaos the bedroom tax will cause and not least immediately in its discretionary housing payment (DHP) budget.  It was given £1.6m for all DHPs and expected by central government (rather disingenuously after it cut the overall budgets by 10%) to top this up with £2.4m of its own money.  Liverpool has not done this, along with many councils, and in a news release last week stated it has spent out over £400,000. More than 25% of its annual budget has already been spent meaning the DHP budget will run out in late July or early August.  Add to this the 1315 additional bedroom tax cases it never knew about from the NHF figures and it will have much more impact on tenants, landlord and council homeless budgets than first feared.

Also in conversation with Deputy Mayor Councillor Paul Brant on Wednesday this week I mentioned that the benefit cap is likely to have greater impact on council homelessness services than the bedroom tax.  The benefit cap has an average £93 per week cut in benefit compared with the £14 bedroom tax average.  He mentioned there are only about 200 or so cases in Liverpool yet the DWP has sent out letters to 490 households in Liverpool to tell them they will be affected.  So, again, what is the true reliable number?

More practically and worryingly as the benefit cap comes into effect from July 15^th this year the council DHP pot will be empty by that time and a £93 per week cut in benefit guarantees eviction for arrears.  The Council will be facing huge additional costs and these are public purse costs which central government fails to acknowledge and so the bedroom tax and benefit cap are a transfer of financial cost and risk to local government as well as tenant and landlord.

Note that despite my earlier posts accusing Liverpool City Council of a dirty tricks campaign in the bedroom tax the Council has corrected this and has extended the appeal deadline and so I am not taking issue with Cllrs Baldock and Brant over the figures above as the Council has nothing to gain and much to lose in underestimating the bedroom tax and benefit cap figures.  It’s more a case of cock-up theory than conspiracy theory.

Yet when it comes to evictions the Council will have full homelessness duties due to welfare reform arrears and tenants will not be deemed as intentionally homeless by the Council.  If the Council (and any other Council) try this ‘intentionality’ strategy then all manner of protest and challenge will rain down on them.  Many Councils I have spoken with believe such tenants will be deemed intentionally homeless yet how many of them have read what Steve Webb said in the last bedroom tax debate on 27^th February?  Hansard records:

Steve Webb: If I may, I shall respond to the Chairman of the Select Committee, who made an important point about those who are “intentionally homeless”. Although it is for local authorities to make decisions on homelessness applications as they do now, under current statutory homelessness legislation, if the only reason for the person’s homelessness is a reduction in benefit that is outside their control they should not be considered intentionally homeless by the local authority. I can put that on the record and hope it is helpful.

The welfare reform benefit reductions, that is the bedroom tax and the benefit cap ARE outside of the control of the tenant and so central government despite the caveat this is a local government decision expect such tenants caught to be deemed unintentionally homeless and the local council to have a full duty…of course to a huge cost to local government.

If Liverpool City Council’s DHP budget is drained by the time the benefit cap comes into force in 7 weeks time then the additional cost of the inevitable homelessness will be very significant.

This is why the numbers are important and need to be accurate.  How can any council and councillors serve their communities if they don’t know the numbers affected?  How can any council plan any training for their homeless department staff on the intentionality issue with welfare reform deductions?  How can any council plan DHP budgets and whether or not to allocate additional monies to the pittance that central government has given them which amounts to just 6% of the anticipated need?  Will Council’s homeless prevention teams act in a stronger gatekeeping role than before and attempt to deny the full duties they will have to the poor tenant affected by the bedroom tax and benefit cap!?

Inevitably they will as there are huge cost pressures of homelessness which should have been anticipated but were not because they underestimated the figures!

The original DWP estimate of 660,000 affected released June 2012 and borne out by the NHF figures are based on the HB claimant count at April 2012 and now the latest figures we have for Feb 2013 show a national rise in this of 67,000 or so and in Liverpool’s case 937 additional claimants.  Extrapolating the typical social to private tenant ratio for Liverpool could see about 600 additional bedroom tax cases in Liverpool taking the figure to 12,280 and almost 2000 higher than the working figure of 10,365 the Council appears to be using.

Using the same 2.4 persons per household it could be that 160,000 or so more men women and children are affected by the bedroom tax and in Liverpool an additional 4600 men women and children!

The same will be happening across the country and the bedroom tax numbers are NOT reliable.

I have real concerns for a sharp rise in intentional homeless decisions nationally and decisions that will run contrary to the Steve Webb ‘reassurance’ as above.

This brings me onto a final and linked point and one I first raised a few months back in late March that really does need much further consideration.

In Norris Green which is part of the West Derby constituency of Stephen Twigg in Liverpool I was told that tenants were abandoning their properties ahead of the bedroom tax.  They were just packing up and doing a flit because they knew they couldn’t afford the bedroom tax deduction was the reason given for this.  I have had updates to that anecdotal evidence and even went around the estate last week to see.  The situation is so bad and so acute that the landlord cannot apparently afford to ‘tin’ the properties and is using Perspex instead!  I have been told by reliable sources that Cobalt Housing’s budget for tinning up properties has run out and hence the cheaper Perspex is being used.

It is self-evident that abandonment of property is rife in the area and this area is the worst affected of the 30 wards in Liverpool with 1007 affected by the bedroom tax according to the (underestimated) Council figures.  Almost 10% of the bedroom tax affected households across the 30 wards in the City are in Norris Green

Norris Green is an ex-Council estate now managed by Cobalt Housing and 80% of the properties are 3 bed properties.  Yet the City Council had a policy for years of putting those with a 2 bed or even 1 bed need there as few wanted to live there.  The same will have happened in other major cities too. I am not painting a sink estate picture as that is not true of Norris Green and many families have lived there for decades and quite happily and it has a very strong sense of community.  Yet these families are the typical ones affected by the bedroom tax – families who have raised their children there who have now flown the coop leaving mum and dad – who are now grandparents – alone in the 3 bed family home to which they return with grandchildren in tow of a Sunday.

That is what the bedroom tax does.  It destroys communities and none more so in Liverpool than in Norris Green.  Yet the large numbers of tenants who have abandoned are doing themselves no favours.  Even if they change their names or some other ruse they will be found eventually and their Housing Benefit will be reduced by the arrears they owe their landlord for the 4 weeks’ notice they should have given.  This will lead to them being evicted from their current properties, most likely private rented at the lower end of the market and being found intentionally homeless by the Council for abandoning the previous property in Norris Green and Liverpool City Council will not have a full duty to re-house them.  So where will they live?  How many will have nowhere to live?  How many children’s lives will be affected? I don’t know and don’t want to think about it to be honest as it is a horrific but likely scenario.

It is too easy and simplistic to say it is the tenants fault for abandoning.  Yes they are wrong to do so and it does not work in their own interests, yet these tenants are not thinking straight due directly to the bedroom tax and other welfare reforms. That is something that numbers can’t say and if one of the major unforeseen consequences of the welfare reforms which all attack the most vulnerable social tenants. Tenants are not thinking straight because they are so stressed over the bedroom tax and the context of it with below inflation welfare benefit rises, paying council tax for the first time and cost of living expenditure such as food and utilities rising far more than inflation.

The additional public purse and taxpayer cost this will bring to all local councils has not been factored into any financial projections the government has made and even if the numbers affected have not increased, which they clearly have, then the overall cost to the public purse and to the taxpayer will be higher than the disingenuous savings the coalition claim they will bring to it.

It is time local councils started to lobby central government over these additional financial costs to them of welfare reforms.  Central government is shafting local councils regardless of their political hue by transferring huge direct and indirect costs of the welfare reforms which are financially unsustainable for the country.  Instead of the general public believing in their naivety that the coalition is reducing the welfare spend it is time local councils exposed just how much more the welfare reform policy is costing and is going to cost the public purse and the taxpayer.

Getting the bedroom tax numbers right is only a start, but a very necessary one.

Liverpool Bedroom Tax news release – Nowhere near enough Cllr Brant

Last week I posted about a bedroom tax ‘dirty tricks’ campaign by Liverpool City Council.  This then got a response from Deputy Mayor Cllr Paul Brant which I also commented upon as being woeful.  This is all covered here.

On Friday last week Liverpool City Council then issued another press statement through its PR unit at Dale Street News.  The text of this is at the end and it contains welcome news not least that the appeal deadline has been extended by a further month.  Yet of course this is only for those who have already requested information or an explanation of the original decision – it does nothing for those who did not submit anything as they were dissuaded from doing so by the alleged cost of doing so – one of the dirty tricks.  So it’s a cautious welcome.

Yet LCC needs to do so much more and need to decisively align itself with the 1985 Housing Act which does state what a bedroom CANNOT be in law despite the lack of a definition of what is a bedroom in the guidance.  This has been misread and misunderstood as while it correctly states the DWP will not in future define a bedroom it does NOT means there is no definition of what a bedroom can or cannot be already in legislation.  The 1985 Housing Act does state what CANNOT be a bedroom. Further as I explain here this decisive move, which is already in part at play in Bristol and Nottingham is in the best interests and best financial interests of tenant, landlord, businesses in and the economy of the city and the Council itself.

This latest news release also contains a few more subtle issues not least about Discretionary Housing Payments or DHPs which are important to note.  It says LCC has paid out over £200,000 in DHPs (the majority of the £400k paid out) and this is very interesting and has significant consequences for tenant, landlord and the Council.

Liverpool City Council received £1,606,233 in DHPs from central government and was allowed to add to this with £2.41m of its own money up to a maximum of £4,01,583.  Briefly every council is allowed and expected to put it £3 of its own money for every £2 it gets directly from central government. I reserve comment on the morality of this and merely say this is yet another transfer of financial risk from central to local government.

Does anyone know whether Liverpool City Council has put in this £2.41m of its own money?  That should be the first question asked of Cllr Paul Brant and indeed of every council up and down the country.

If LCC hasn’t put this £2.41m into the DHP pot then it has spent 25% of its annual £1.61m DHP budget in the first 6 weeks which means little is available for the rest of the year and for all the other non bedroom tax purposes it was intended to pay for.

The DHP budget is to pay for all housing top-ups not just the bedroom tax and extrapolated from the official figures in the S1 or 2013 guidance as I stated here only 17% or one-sixth of the DHPs should be spent on bedroom tax shortfalls in the year.  More money has been allocated in DHPs for the benefit cap with its average £93 per week deduction – alone this is £2.38m in Liverpool and the benefit cap comes online in 7 weeks time – and the vast majority of DHP money, about 68% is spent on private sector tenants.

Crunch the numbers and this means total yearly spend on bedroom tax DHPs in Liverpool is £273k yet LCC has already spent over £200k on the bedroom tax so about 75% of its entire yearly bedroom tax provision in 6 weeks!

This of course means there will be little money left to pay for the 490 benefit cap families who like the many thousands of private tenants for whom there soon will be no money left in the DHP pot they will be evicted and cost Liverpool City Council a fortune in temporary homeless costs.  These 490 families with the benefit cap will have a cut of £2.38m per year in benefits and so the £1.61m in DHPs that central government gave to Liverpool needs to be viewed in that context – the benefit cap claimants alone would take up 150% of the whole DHP budget before a single bedroom tax claimant who have a benefit cut of circa £8.6m.  So £11m for the bedroom tax and benefit cap alone in Liverpool to which we can add a minimum £20m need for DHPs from private tenants.  Massive evictions and homeless cost is inevitable in simple terms and huge cost to Liverpool City Council.

Across the country we see reported 400% increases in applications for DHPs and all other Councils will be in the same boat as Liverpool when the benefit cap comes in on the 15 July – no money left and huge increases in evictions from the social and private rented sectors.  Yet this is the reality of central government giving local government just 6% of the welfare reforms shortfalls in DHPs. If councils dont add their expected amounts then 15 out of every 16 wont get a DHP.  If LCC and other Councils do add the maximum amount then 17 out of every 20 applying wont get a DHP.

Liverpool and all other local councils are going to see massive increased costs in homelessness.  Where Liverpool and other councils trim services from to get this additional money is of course another issue entirely! As is what services need to be cut to pay for this!  Still what a clever trick the localism agenda is from the coalition which sees local Councils being blamed for these cuts obviated by coalition policies!!

This cannot go on as it is economic madness to the public purse and to local councils as well as being thoroughly outrageous in making many tens of thousands of additional families homeless.

We know private landlords will evict private tenants at the drop of a hat if they do not get DHPs, which private tenants won’t get because of the bedroom tax.  That is not a political statement just one of reality and fact.  It is extremely likely that social landlords will have to evict social tenants on financial grounds and use of the dreaded Ground 8 – the only eviction or possession ground in which the judge has no discretion – will emerge out of social landlords financial necessity.  The social landlords will then get blamed for the welfare reforms and not central government. 

The social landlord and the social tenant will to all intents and purposes be at war with one another rather than both being on the same side against the government.  The local council and local HB claimant (the tenant) will be at war too and again the tenant will blame the council with some justification, just as they blame the local social landlord, again with some justification – although the real villain of the piece is central government.

Frankly, IDS and the DWP and the coalition must be laughing their heads off!  Their pernicious policies are pitching tenant against landlord and tenant against councils when it should be tenant + landlord + council all pitching against central government!

I am sure the swivel eyed loons think this is truly Machiavellian when the reality is the welfare reforms are closer to one of Baldrick’s cunning plans such is their ineptitude.

(Ok that last comment is political but nonetheless valid but it’s time to put an end to all this coalition created enmity between tenant and landlord and tenant and Council. 

It is time to think again and I restate some earlier thoughts on this which are even more needed now given that one large Liverpool based landlord Riverside has said 50% of bedroom tax shortfalls have not been paid and a further 25% of tenants have only part-paid.  Nobody expected such huge non-payment figures.  Riverside stated last year that they had doubled their provision for bad debts from 2% of the rent roll to 4%.  I stated at the time it may need to double again to 8%.  Hence figures of 50% of tenants not paying a penny and 25% only making part-payments of the shortfall are staggering in their size.  Other social landlords have stated that 18% have not paid a penny such as Halton Housing Trust and others 25% such as Spectrum Housing – These are alarming figures for the social landlord and especially as many of the welfare reforms have yet to come into effect.

If these levels of arrears continue many smaller social landlords will go bust and quite quickly; many tenants will be evicted and quickly and many councils will see homeless costs spiral and again very quickly.  I have always said the welfare reforms are an attack on social housing itself not just landlords and tenants and that is precisely what they are as these early figures show dramatically.

Liverpool Council – needs to adopt the position of Bristol and Nottingham and rule that (a) any room under 50 square feet is not a bedroom; and (b) any room between 50 and 70 square feet is only half a bedroom.  Both of these are in the 1985 Housing Act.  Note well that to do this would also conform to the A4/2012 guidance issue to Liverpool City Council by the DWP. 

What this would do is significant.  (a) As a good estimate about 4 or 5% of purported bedrooms are less than 50 square feet in the city and so this would take about 585 households out of the bedroom tax.  Yet (b) about 20 – 25% of purported bedrooms are less than 70 square feet and this would take a further 2300 to 3000 or so households out of the bedroom tax or reduce the shortfall from 25% to 14%.

It would also reduce the need for DHPs and also save the council significant sums in homelessness costs.

The social landlords – They need to reclassify in the same way using the 50 and 70 square feet law as a guide.  They will lose less money and so be able to function as they wish to do.

For example – let’s assume a 2 bed property has a rent of £84 in Liverpool and a 3 bed a rent of £92.  The Smith family have a 2 bed need and are the tenant of a purported 3 bed property yet is in reality and after the application of the 1985 Housing Act a 2 bed plus boxroom measuring 9 feet by 7 feet.  The property becomes a 2.5 bed house.

The rent is adjusted to £88 per week the midway point between the current 2 and 3 bed rent levels.  The landlord loses £4 per week yet takes away a potential arrear of £12.88 per week this being the £14 deduction for the bedroom tax.  That £4 per week can easily be made up over the next 3 years or so by increasing the rents at the maximum permissible under the HCorp formula of [(RPI+0.5%) + £2]

The bedroom tax issue goes away for the landlord, the tenant and the council in homeless and DHP cost.  Central government is pissed off as it does not get the deduction and saving it was looking for yet all of the above is entirely lawful and I argue entirely necessary.

Given that landlords and councils would be exposed to less financial risk by such a reclassification the landlord’s financiers would be more pleased too and would not need to downgrade landlord’s credit ratings as they did for a second time last week.  I’m sure these financiers would also welcome that landlords would be less likely ‘at war’ with their customers.  Social landlords and councils could then afford to be more ‘lenient’ and to work more closely with tenants to minimise tenant costs which is what they are principally setting out to so and also with more job creation initiatives. Yet currently these are perceived as much too little much too late which is unfortunate as they do have some merit.

Yet if social landlords do not take this necessary action then the huge non-payment figures will only increase when HB gets paid direct to tenants which starts in October.  The minute the tenant takes control of rent payment – which is what direct payment is all about – the social landlord is on a very sticky wicket in financial terms.  Instead of sending out heavily red-inked threatening letters to tenants as they are doing now over tiny amounts the social landlord will be on its knees begging the tenant to pay rent from October.  If social landlords choose not to see that then they deserve to go out of business!!

Late last week I saw the most challenging statement yet from any social landlord.  This was from Bolton at Home and is by far the most challenging statement issued by any social landlord in the bedroom tax.  Yet it still doesn’t go far enough.  Reclassification along the lines of the 1985 Housing Act is needed as the first step – and after all a court may rule this in any case next week or next month and so the combined Ostrich and Nuremburg syndrome we have witnessed to date from social landlords is an obsolete strategy in any case.  Burying the head in the sand and all-out efforts to deny the 1985 Act applies are futile.

I return to Liverpool City Council and directly address Cllr Paul Brant.  He is also the chair of the board of Riverside ECHG as well as being the deputy mayor and will understand the implications of the landlord reclassification on 1985 Act lines and the position of the Council in having the powers to rule on the bedroom size issues.  He will see the logic in this and the financial sense to the landlord and to the Council.  I am sure he will also see the political benefits such a decision would bring personally and to his party as well as the benefits it would bring to Liverpool business owners who are rightly worried about £20m+ going out of the local economy.

The only losers in such a decisive step is central government savings from the bedroom tax.  The public purse overall would save more as less of the additional cost to the Councils is taken away.  And that sums up the reality here.  This is NOT a political strategy it is an economic one that is in the best interests of the people of Liverpool from the benefit claiming tenant to the multi-millionaire businessman and all in between.

Liverpool City Council ruling that any room under 50 square feet cannot be a bedroom and any room between 50 and 70 square feet is merely half a bedroom is necessary for the tenant, the landlords, local businesses and above all the Council.  It remains to be seen whether Cllr Paul Brant and the Council will take this decisive step.  They have it in their powers to do so and it is in the best financial interests of all concerned…apart from the coalition government who frankly should not have embarked on this pernicious back of a fag packet policy in the first place.

Cllr Paul Brant should put on his barrister’s hat and re-read paragraph 12 of the A4 guidance of 2012 again as this clearly allows Liverpool City Council and all other Councils nationally to do the same.  It says:

“We will not be defining what we mean by a bedroom in legislation and there is no definition of a minimum bedroom size set out in regulations. It will be up to the landlord to accurately describe the property in line with the actual rent charged.”

It does NOT say there is no legal definition of a bedroom ONLY that the government will not legislate for one in the FUTURE.  It merely says, correctly, there is no size issues set out in (HB) regulations.   Bristol and Nottingham have decided that any room under 50 square feet cannot be a bedroom in line with sections 325 and 326 of the 1985 Housing Act; though bizarrely not the 50 to 70 square feet issue seeing such rooms as half a bedroom and for the 14% bedroom tax deduction to apply the tenant needs to under occupy by one (ie 1.0) bedrooms.

It’s time to lobby Liverpool City Council and Cllr Paul Brant in particular as this is his area of responsibility within the Council to make such a stand.  They can do this and it is morally right, legally acceptable and in their financial interests – So why the hell haven’t they and every other Council already done this becomes the question? 

I welcome cautiously the concessions of this news release but LCC need to go much further and do so very quickly.

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The text of this LCC news release is below.

Liverpool City Council is issuing guidance to tenants who are challenging the spare room subsidy, also known as the bedroom tax.

Around 11,000 people in the city are affected by the welfare change, which results in reduced housing benefit payments for people of working age. 

Following feedback from tenants who are requesting information to help them submit an appeal, the council is issuing the following guidance:

• There is no charge for submitting an appeal or asking for information from the Council to support the appeal (eg: correspondence between the council and their landlord)

• The council will be writing to people who have requested information asking them to set out their case for an appeal, and will extend the time limit to lodge an appeal for a further month

• Where landlord and tenant dispute the number of bedrooms in the home the Council will treat any such cases as appeals and look carefully at the circumstances to review the decision

• If people believe we have assessed their claim using incorrect or out of date information, eg: the number of people living in a property has changed, they should contact the Benefits Service

Deputy Mayor and Cabinet member for Finance, Councillor Paul Brant, said: “I fully appreciate that people are extremely concerned about the financial impact of the Government imposed welfare changes, and I am determined we do all we can to help people through the process.

“This is the biggest change in the administration of benefits for a generation and we are constantly reviewing what we are telling those affected and making tweaks and changes to improve the system.

“We have taken on board the feedback we’ve had from tenants and are making a number of improvements.

“We are working closely with social landlords to help and support tenants who find themselves in financial difficulty to help them out.”

The council has already paid out £400,000 in Discretionary Housing Payments since the start of April to people in the most need, with the majority of it being paid out in relation to the bedroom tax .

More information about the spare room subsidy or ‘bedroom tax’ can be found at http://liverpool.gov.uk/benefits-and-grants/housing-benefits/reduction-to-housing-benefit-or-bedroom-tax/

Some limited funding is available for Discretionary Housing Payments for people in the most need. More details and the application criteria can be found at http://liverpool.gov.uk/benefits-and-grants/housing-benefits/discretionary-housing-payments/

Bedroom Tax- Coventry Council denies tenants a right of appeal

MAJOR UPDATE 7.50PM  below- As Coventry Councillor still maintain no right of appeal !! Oh dear !!

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Original post

I have been sent another Council letter over the weekend about a Council acting unlawfully over the bedroom tax and this time it’s from Coventry City Council. The letter says:

YOU ARE UNABLE TO APPEAL AGAINST THIS DECISION

Every tenant is a claimant and has the absolute right to appeal any Housing Benefit decision such as the bedroom tax yet Coventry City Council have been denying that right to tenants in the city.

HOW MANY VULNERABLE TENANTS IN COVENTRY HAVE BELIEVED THE COUNCIL AND NOT APPEALED THE BEDROOM TAX?

This is an outrage and Coventry City Council needs to act on this unlawful letter.  Like every Council an appeal costs them money to investigate or review the decision and again to defend at appeal. In giving out this patently erroneous information that the bedroom tax decision does not carry a right of appeal then like other Councils who have adopted this unlawful strategy of misinformation many tenants will not have appealed and may have missed the deadline for an ‘in-time’ appeal.

Coventry needs to correct this letter publicly and apologise and like Liverpool City Council has done extend the date for an appeal so that those tenants who wish to appeal are not disadvantaged by having their appeal deemed ‘out-of-time’ by this misinformation the Council has sent out.

Every tenant that has appealed or has been dissuaded from appealing should add to their appeal letters and include this information so that the tribunal does not simply dismiss any appeals as ‘out-of-time.’

What Coventry City Council has done and now has to do is cost itself more money as their unlawful actions may well see more people appealing than they originally thought and the more that do the greater cost this will give to the Council – a greater cost that the Council deserves because of this unlawful letter which seeks to deny (deliberately?) the claimants absolute right to appeal.

Last month it emerged that Cornwall Council said the same, that a tenant could not appeal, and with 24 hours they publicly changed this, and despite an incredulous explanation that this was a simple oversight the Council there did apologise and rapidly correct their mistake.  Coventry needs to do the same.

Last week i reported on Liverpool City Councils ‘dirty tricks’ of trying to dissuade tenants from appealing the bedroom tax (here) and LCC responded with a mostly satisfactory response by extending the deadline for bedroom tax appeals by one month.

The one issue we can only estimate is the number of tenants who have been dissuaded from appealing the bedroom tax decision be that in Cornwall, Liverpool, Coventry and elsewhere as I have heard reports of Council staff refusing to take appeals (Liverpool, Sefton, Chesterfield and others) Councils giving out misinformation (Wiltshire, Bradford, Coventry and others) and many other tactics right across the country.

These are clearly not isolated cases of maladministration or bad practice and will lead to an increased number of appeals paradoxically.  Tribunals who have to assess whether an ‘out-of-time’ appeal, one issued over a month after the decision, have a valid reason for being out of time.

The Coventry case above is yet one more example of a Council giving the appeals tribunals strong justification for allowing out of time appeals to be heard and not simply dismissed.  Further reviews and appeals will cost each Council more money and the exact opposite of what they were trying to achieve and if this post highlights that and more tenants do seek a review and or appeal the bedroom tax decision because of this then the additional cost local councils will face is deserved and these Councils only have themselves to blame.

It emerged over the weekend that central government appears to be trying to reduce the number of appeals and reported this has cost the coalition £500 million, because of the additional costs it is facing in increased appeals too.  Yet as I outline above the incompetence of local government in seeking to deny the tenant claimants absolute right of appeal – and it matters not if these were deliberate attempts or not to deny – will see tribunals having to admit far more out of time appeals because of that local government incompetence!

Don;t you just love irony reader?

MAJOR UPDATE 7.50PM  below- As Coventry Councillor still maintain no right of appeal!!

What is listed below is a screen-grab of a Facebook conversation with Cllr David Welsh – a Labour Councillor in Coventry and, not to put too fine a point on it, a conversation in which Cllr Walsh clearly does not know what he is talking about when it comes to the bedroom tax and what appeal rights a tenant has.

This is not subject to appeal however much we disagree with it?  Oh dear Cllr Welsh the bedroom tax decision like any other Housing Benefit decision taken by your council has a full right of appeal as well as a right to ask the Council to review its decision and a right to ask the Council for a statement of reasons or more information and explanation of how it made the decision.

“What is subject to appeal is if information is wrong” True.  Yet also how the Council took the decision, how the Council decided what a bedroom is, how the Council decided how many bedrooms each property has and a whole lot more.

David Welsh This requires clarification as it is not council policy but government policy to reduce housing benefit for spare rooms and not subject to appeal to the council no matter how much we disagree with it.  What is subject to appeal is if information is wrong and deductions are being made that shouldn’t.  People affected by the bedroom tax can apply for discretionary housing payments but it will be used to protect the most vulnerable as it is only £800,000 a year. The bedroom tax is a disgusting policy and that is why I have offered to sponsor a petition against it. I support the campaign against the bedroom tax, and will do what I can to support those affected.

3 hours ago via mobile · Like

Carol Milner I’m ashamed to be living in Coventry, this needs to be cleared up soon. Of course people should be allowed to appeal if the information stated by the Council is incorrect.

2 hours ago · Like · 1

Coventry Against the Bedroom Tax It’s not council policy, but the council did send out a letter saying people could not appeal when they can. That’s misinformation.

The council were given £800K for Discretionary Housing Payments, and were told they could use up to 2.5x that amount from their reserves but chose not to.

2 hours ago · Like

David Welsh It is not misinformation, it is fact – there is no appeal to the council for the bedroom tax as it is Conservative government policy. If information held is wrong then you need to get it updated; that is what the letter is telling people. The council cannot cover everything the government has cut as there is not enough in reserves, but we are doing what we can to support people. We need a campaign that includes all groups and people against the bedroom tax, a divided opposition is what the government wants.

about an hour ago · Like

Coventry Against the Bedroom Tax All tenants have the right to appeal against a bedroom tax decision, based on a technicality if necessary – the council is incorrect.

One tenant (Bekir) is being taxed for a 34 sq ft box room (1.3m x 2.5m with an 81cm door) – should he not appeal?!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADY6o-1mYrM

Actually Cllr Welsh it is misinformation by Coventry City Council in saying a tenant cannot appeal the bedroom tax decision.  Not only that it is maladministration of the Council’s behalf and it is unlawful too.

May I suggest you check this with DWP or even the Head of Legal or Monitoring Officer at the Council.  Can I suggest you check this out with CPAG or Shelter or CAB or any Law Centre as they will tell you the same – that every claimant (the tenant) to a HB decision does have an absolute right of appeal against that decision taken by your Council who act as agents of the DWP in making such decisions.

May I also suggest you go back to your Health, Social Care and Welfare Reform Scrutiny Board (5) minutes – which you Chair – of 1^st May 2013 (point 3.7) which says there are  2556 tenants affected by the bedroom tax in Coventry too.  The official figures from the DWP say there are 1030 in Coventry NE; 973 in Coventry NW and 942 in Coventry South, making a total of 2945 and not 2500.  You were saying you have done what you can to help those affected I believe?  It appears you have not even counted 389 tenants which official DWP figures say are affected. 

While looking at the same minutes please turn to 3.24 which says there are 270 households affected by the benefit cap in Coventry and ask yourself why DWP figures show they have written to 490 tenants in Coventry to say they are affected.  That is an 81% difference!

The Council is doing what it can to help those affected you say?

Finally, it was and is up to Coventry City Council to define what a bedroom is and the last point on the Facebook conversations sees your Council saying a room of 34 square feet is a bedroom!  Can I suggest you see what other Councils such as Bristol and Nottingham are saying on this and what the 1985 Housing Act says on this – that any room with a floor space of less than 50 square feet cannot be a bedroom in legislation.

I see your Council is doing what it can to help vulnerable tenants again?  Or is this a question of your Council deliberately putting out misinformation and unlawful information to dissuade these vulnerable tenants of their absolute right to appeal YOUR bedroom tax decision and thereby save the Council money?

PS Nearly forgot – can you tell me if your Council, yes the one that is doing what it can to help those affected, has put in the £1,996,608 to the DHP pot to go with the £798,643 your Council has received from central government.  If not, please explain the phrase “doing what we can” to me. Thanks

SHORT UPDATE Tuesday 21st May 2013 8am

Just spoke on BBC Radio Coventry about this and was told nobody from the Council was available – make of that what you will!

Strange how Coventry City Council has an appeal form on its website against Housing Benefit decisions like the bedroom tax yet still denies anyone has a right of appeal!

This even says: -

“If you are appealing more than one month after the decision was made, you must say why your appeal has been delayed“

Anyone think that the Council sending out 3000 letters saying you can’t appeal is a good enough reason? I do!

 

Further Update – Coventry City Council admit they were wrong! See http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/coventry-city-council-apologises-families-4001369

 

Knowsley Council and the bedroom tax – ignorance, ineptitude and denial and appeal strewn

Knowsley MBC is one of the 5 councils in Merseyside and the Council with the largest percentage of bedroom tax affected tenants in the North West and possibly in England. You would think they would know something about how to make a bedroom tax decision wouldn’t you…ahem!

Knowsley always comes in the top three of councils with indices of deprivation and has done for decades.  You would think the Council there would have some experience of dealing with benefit claims.  Yet all this shows is rank incompetence.

Shame then that their level of knowledge about the bedroom tax is so low and their incompetence is so high when it should be the other way around

Knowsley has almost 44% of its working-age tenants on HB caught by the bedroom tax as I stated here

 

Knowsley

First to note is it took 23 days to get a reply and after that it merely goes downhill and I have numbered the major points and will below the reply make some comments.

1. Quite why Knowsley MBC emboldened the ERRANT and INCOMPLETE information I do not know.  The spare bedroom for an overnight carer only applies (a) if the Council agrees there is a need and (b) it only applies to the tenant or their partner and not for example to the child of the tenant..

Unfortunately this basic level of a lack of knowledge then goes even further downhill and questions do have to be asked about the competence of KMBC HB department.

2. (a) There is NO exemption for a disabled child.  There is some discretion in every Council is a child is severely disabled enough (and how that is determined God only knows!) and only then if the Council agrees.  (b) Approved foster carers – and those waiting to be approved – are exemptions but then only for 1 room and not more.

So that’s a further four errors of competence.

3. My records show.  What precisely are those records?  KMBC was asked for these yet failed to supply what their records did show.  How convenient of the Council to fail to include these in their response when they were asked a straightforward question!

4. Information provided by your landlord INDICATES?  It “indicates!”  I see so the Council failed to verify the data (not information) that the landlord, who I remind had no obligation to provide any data whatsoever, provided.  Yet again we see another Council that has simply believed the word of a third-party – the landlord – who has a vested financial interest and conflict of interest in this decision!!  The Council goes on to say that the HB has been reduced on this basis AND the Council has not sought to check whether the rent set and charged by the landlord is correct.  Like all Councils they have merely assumed it is and not sought to verify the rent level charged.

LET ME PUT THIS AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE.  IF IT WAS UP TO THE SOCIAL LANDLORDS TO DEFINE HOW MANY BEDROOMS A PROPERTY HAS THEN ALL LANDLORDS WOULD HAVE SAID EVERY PROPERTY IS A ONE BEDROOM PROPERTY AND THUS AVOID THE BEDROOM TAX ALTOGETHER.

HENCE FOR ANY COUNCIL TO MERELY AND SIMPLY BELIEVE WHAT A SOCIAL LANDLORD SAID IS INCOMPETENCE WRIT LARGE AS THE COUNCILS HAVE TO VERIFY WHAT A BEDROOM IS AND HOW MANY EACH PROPERTY HAS

So a raft of appeal grounds there as to KMBC competence and the offensive way they have taken the decision based on ease of administrative cost rather than coming to the correct decision.

5. Bear with me there is another raft of appeal grounds in this short paragraph

5.1 This is a huge piece of misinformation by the Council.  The DWP did not say there is not minimum bedroom size in legislation at all. The DWP said there is not a bedroom size definition set out in (HB) regulations – a very different thing altogether and a fundamental misrepresentation of the A4 /2012 guidance by Knowsley MBC.

5.2 The DWP did not say there will be no minimum size set out in legislation or in regulations.  The DWP merely said there is no minimum size set out in regulations and made no comment whatsover about a current or future definition of a bedroom by its size.

For the avoidance of doubt on these two points here is precisely what DWP said in the first sentence of paragraph 12 in the A4 of 2012 HB circular and guidance:

We will not be defining what we mean by a bedroom in legislation and there is no definition of a minimum bedroom size set out in regulations.

5.3 It does indeed say in the second sentence of paragraph 12 that “It will be up to the landlord to accurately describe the property in line with the actual rent charged.“

However that doe snot mean the Council has to accept the landlord view.  It also does not mean the Council had no obligation to verify this information, which they did.  Again both of these are appeal grounds.

5.4 Your landlord has provided details of the number of bedrooms… – The Council is the decision-maker her and the Council has CHOSEN simply t believe the landlords view.  Yet the Council has again not sought to verify this.  Additionally the fundamental misreading of the guidance at 5.1 and 5.2 above by the Council is the issue and yet another appeal ground.

5.5. The final sentence, “…if you believe the information (sic – it was only data not information – see below) was incorrect please let me know.”  This is the responsibility of the Council as the decision-maker to check as part of the decision and not for the tenant to verify or not after the flawed decision has been taken by the Council not verifying that.

6. This paragraph ends with “…provide details of why  you believe your claim has been incorrectly assessed.”

The above points all form the reasons why the original decision was incorrectly and ineptly assessed and done by means of the cheapest possible administrative cost rather than taking the correct decision in the first place as the Council should have done!!

In summary this is in common parlance a joke of a process undertaken by Knowsley MBC.  It is deeply offensive that the original decision was taken on unverified data provided by a third party with a clear conflict of interest and that third party – the social landlord – had no obligation to provide any such data at all.

___________________________________________________________________

Note Well: Data and NOT information.

The landlords provided data only.  Data ONLY becomes information when it is processed yet the Council did no processing of that data at all and they did not even seek to verify it!!

Bedroom Tax – a direct full frontal political attack on social housing

Late Wednesday evening and just browsing on Twitter a tweet from Nick Atkin Chief Executive of Halton Housing Trust caught my eye.

It maybe in point of fact just one interim position from one social landlord but it deserves a huge amount of attention

_________________________________________________________________________________

1. Nick Atkin ‏@nickatkin_hht5h

   Of 920 @haltonhousing customers under occupying: 69% (636) made a payment; 18% (166) have not made any payment; 13% (118) are in credit

__________________________________________________________________________________

What this says as a definite is that 18% of bedroom tax tenants have not made a payment towards their rent.  If we extrapolate this on a national scale this would be 18% of 660,000  rents or 118,800 social households have not paid ANY of their bedroom tax shortfall.

The average shortfall we are informed is £14 per week and so social landlords lose £1,663,200 per week from this.

This then equates to £86,783,400 or nearly £87m per year loss to landlords!

The limitations of 140 characters aside in any tweet the first part also suggests that the 69% who made a payment may not have all made a full payment.  Some of this 69% could be a part-payment of the bedroom tax shortfall and as such HHT and extrapolated all social landlords will lose a bit more than £87m per year.

Yes this is only one social landlord and yes any extrapolation based on this contains some degree of caution.  However, if the national picture is anything like this then the proverbial really is going to hit the fan with social housing this year, for landlord and tenant.

Social housing as a model is directly under attack by the coalition and the above figures reveal the extent of this which I suspect will get much worse as many of the welfare ‘reforms’ (sic – as reform means to improve) have yet to come on-stream.  The benefit cap in July, monthly payments and direct payment from October and the dog’s breakfast of Universal Credit and its digital by default model of access. Then add in council tax payments for the first time and all other household expenditure items such as food prices and gas and electricity rising faster than wages and benefits and you begin to see just how conservative this £87m per year figure begins to look.

I’ll stop there as if anyone had any doubt that the welfare ‘reforms’ are not a full-frontal and direct assault on social housing itself and an overt political and economic attack on social housing by this coalition government then ……enough said!

Bedroom Size – It is a bedroom tax issue more developments

It seems size in the bedroom does matter…yet again and especially in Nottingham

I have consistently stated that the floor size of a ‘bedroom’ is a relevant and pertinent factor in the bedroom tax decision.  This view was rubbished by CIH in a thinly veiled personal attack on me and my professionalism which I successfully argued was nonsense and I held my ground and insisted that the 1985 Housing Act was relevant and a factor in the bedroom tax decision.

Last week Bristol City Council agreed that size was a factor and excluded all rooms with a floor size of less than 50 square feet from the bedroom tax.  Today I add to that with a letter from Nottingham City Homes which says exactly the same and is below:

What is deeply disturbing about all of this is that it has come out AFTER the fact and AFTER the bedroom tax decisions were taken by in this case Nottingham City Council

Bedroom size has ALWAYS been an issue because the 1985 Housing Act does have a general definition of what a bedroom cannot be.  As such there is a legal definition in place and at the time the bedroom tax decisions were taken.

This makes every single bedroom tax decision legally unreliable.  Councils DID have to ask landlords for the size of purported ‘bedrooms’ and their failure to ask the size question does for me mean that every decision is unreliable.

However I am perplexed and bemused over this.  If the 1985 Housing Act does apply and this is where it says this then all of the 1985 Act applies and not just the less than 50 square feet issue.  The same 1985 Housing Act says a room of between 50 and 70 square feet is only half a bedroom and so that size criteria must also be part of law and has to be taken into account when making the bedroom tax decision.

Councils cannot dip eclectically in an out of legislation and the 1985 Act either applies or it does not – which is exactly the argument the CIH and NHF and social landlords have been saying all along.  They said it does not apply and I said it does.

The real relevance of this is that I have estimated (and its only an educated guess) that less than 5% of social housing properties have ‘bedrooms’ of less than 50 square feet yet 20% or so have ‘bedrooms’ of less than 70 square feet. This needs to be looked at in bedroom tax numbers.

660,000 social housing properties are affected by the bedroom tax.  So 5% of these or 33,000 would be taken out of the bedroom tax or have a reduced bedroom tax percentage applied if the less than 50 square feet issue applied.  This would also reduce the governments saving by £24m per year and take away a £24m risk of arrears to social landlords and bring smiles to the faces of 24,000 social tenant households

Yet 132,000 statistically are affected by the under 70 square feet issue which means the government savings reduce by £96m per year and social landlords also reduce the risk to arrears by £96m per year.  And 132,000 more happy social tenants.

However, the fact that increasingly the bedroom size issue IS an issue exposes what a sham the bedroom tax decision-making process was.  If your Council did not ask your landlord for room sizes and if your landlord did not provide room sizes to your Council – and having seen scores of Council responses to these questions not one Council did ask -then every bedroom tax decision is unreliable and should not be allowed to stand.

Bedroom size is a very legitimate appeal ground against the bedroom tax HB decisions made nationally and all social tenants should ask for a review and should appeal the bedroom tax decisions, even out-of-time, on these bases.

PS – All tenants have an absolute right to receive from their landlords what information or data more correctly they did supply to your Council.  Today I came across a DWP document about frequently asked questions they published in March 2013 (after this data transfer had taken place!!) and I draw your attention to paragraph 32 and to point (c) of that: -

(c) updating or amending privacy notices. Claimants must be informed about any use of their data. While they will not be asked to provide consent, claimants should be told where their details are going to be onwardly disclosed to the landlord

In plain language you are entitled to ask your landlord and they must respond with what data they sent to the Council under the protocol. The tenant will realise this is the same as one of the questions I drafted in the standard template letter asking for more information to explain the bedroom tax decision – yes the same one that most Councils refuse to release to you citing highly spurious and incredulous Data Protection Act grounds.  Just how difficult is it for Councils to cut and paste one of two rows from a spreadsheet!!!

So the tenant should get requesting the same information from your landlords

Liverpool Council’s dirty tricks over the bedroom tax – fully updated 14 May

Bedroom Tax – Liverpool City Council dirty tricks campaign – the FOI bullshit tactic

LCC is deliberately engaging in a dirty tricks campaign aimed at dissuading the tenant from appealing LCC’s decision to impose the bedroom tax.

The latest dirty trick is to treat tenant requests for further information as if they were Freedom of Information requests or FOI.  Tenants submitted a standard or template letter I drafted which contains 6 questions asking for more information on HOW the Council took the bedroom tax decisions.  In simple terms the 6 questions asking for more information seek an explanation.

Here is the reverse of a HB award notice from Liverpool.

As you can see clearly this is a document from LCC which tells the tenant to ask for an explanation or more information which is the absolute right of the tenant that starts the appeal process. THIS IS NOT AN FOI REQUEST FROM THE TENANT

Here is how Liverpool responded with the FOI bull response (the tenant had written on original before scanning hence judicious use of anonymising)

It states I refer to your request WHICH HAS BEEN PROCESSED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000.  This was merely a letter asking for information by way of explanation that LCC HAS DECIDED TO VIEW INCREDULOUSLY AS A FOI REQUEST –

In short a dirty trick!!!

As you can see this has adopted the 6 original questions – all reasonable – from the standard template letter asking for explanation by way of more information

1.      The tenant needs this information in order to launch a formal appeal that needs to be based on the facts of the case and not just assumptions on HOW the Council took the decision. 

2.      If a tenant lodges an appeal to the court (tribunal) based on assumption and not on fact the tribunal would rightly give such an appeal short shrift. 

3.      The tenant needs the very reasonable information the 6 questions ask of the Council to make a reliable and factual appeal and;

4.      Only the Council has that information.

Yet Liverpool in treating this as an FOI request is seeking to deny giving this necessary information to the tenant as any appeal will cost the Council money.

THIS IS NOT AN FOI REQUEST FROM THE TENANT

Then they are sending the tenant off on a wild goose chase by advising them to go to the Information Commissioner’s Office if they want to challenge LCC’s (unnecessary) FOI position.

YET THIS IS NOT AN FOI REQUEST FROM THE TENANT

What is really going on here is that Liverpool City Council is seeking to reduce the number of appeals by their range of dirty tricks all aimed at making any formal appeal from tenants be deemed as out-of-time appeals.  Then hoping the tribunal rules such appeals are out-of-time without a valid reason and so dismissed and the appeal ended there and then.  The tribunal can decide to hear an out-of-time appeal if the reason for it being out-of-time is valid.

Liverpool City Council in taking an eternity to respond to requests for more information, in giving out false information and steering tenants off on a wild goose chase by choosing to see the request for more information as an FOI request is DELIBERATELY trying to make as many appeals as possible being out of time.

In front of me are 6 cases from 6 different tenants and in each one:

a)      The original decision notice from LCC is dated 9^th April 2013 (Tuesday)

b)      The tenants received these on either Friday 12^th April or Saturday 13^th April

c)      The standard letters with the 6 questions are dated 16^th April (Tuesday) and each one has a receipt from the One Stop Shops in Liverpool where they were hand-delivered

d)      The sole response in each case is the FOI charade letter dated 8 May 2013 and received 10^th May 2013.

What we see here at (a) is the original decision notice dated 9^th April 2013 and the first and only response from LCC being at (d) above dated 7^th May and received 10^th May.

Hence the inadequate yet deliberate (FOI bullshit) response from Liverpool received 10^th May 2013 is ONE MONTH AND ONE DAY after the date on the original notice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LCC has not only attempted not to give the tenant the explanation sought it has designed a standard response to the standard letters yet has taken 22 days to date and send that response from receipt of the six questions on 16^th April 2013 at (c) to at (d) the woeful response dated 78^th May and received 10^th May 2013.

As I state clearly and reasonably above the tenant needs reasonable information that is reasonably requested to make a formal appeal.  Yet Liverpool City Council by hook and by crook is denying them that reasonable and necessary information to do that.

I am advising all the hundreds if not thousands of tenants in Liverpool who this week got a copy of this bullshit FOI response from LCC to write back immediately and state in their own words that :-

(i)                 Your letter asking for more information was NOT a FOI request as LCC has chosen to outrageously interpret it to be;

(ii)               Your letter was a request for more information and explanation of how LCC came to the original decision as you know to be your right as LCC state this on their HB decision notices;

(iii)             You still require the information as originally requested;

(iv)              The information you requested is absolutely necessary to the formal appeal;

(v)                Asking for that reasonable information requested you consider also reasonably as the start of the appeal process.

(vi)              That LCC did not respond to the date when appeals have to be made by and you consider your appeal to start from the date you requested the explanation of how they decided the bedroom tax imposition

(vii)            Remind them as you previously stated that you will submit the formal appeal within 21 days of receipt of the reasonable information you requested and now have to ask for again

The original standard letter with the 6 very reasonable questions was submitted by the tenant in good faith and in its entirety was perfectly reasonable.  Nobody can go to a court or tribunal with arguments based on assumption; they need to be based on fact, yet Liverpool City Council seeking to deny that necessary information to the tenant.  This is outrageous and unfortunately only one of the many underhand dirty tricks that LCC is operating.

The tenant by putting the above in writing and to LCC will have a much stronger chance of their case being heard if the tribunal deem it to be out-of-time.

Tenants may also wish to contact a whole host of bodies and agencies additional to this such as councillors, MPs, MEPs, Local Government Ombudsman and indeed directly to Eric Pickles as the Secretary of State for Local Government and IDS at DWP (HB issues) and Chris Grayling at the Ministry of Justice (Tribunal issues). 

All of these 3 Tory MPs will be delighted to hear of the disgraceful and outrageous conduct and dirty tricks campaign of a Labour run council!

This demonstrates why the bedroom tax appeal is not just a political ‘cause’ of the ‘left’ (though including the Labour Party under any part of ‘left’ is highly debateable!)

The bedroom tax is an issue of what is right and just and challenge to it originated rightly in community and grassroots groups long before the Johnny-Come-Lately’s such as the Labour Party attempted to hijack the agenda.  It is also being arranged and expanded and perpetuated by the ordinary person in communities and grassroots groups too.  These do include many ‘left-wing’ groups and many ‘activists’ and such terminology is both pejorative and used by government to label and smear this very significant public groundswell and action.  That is bloody offensive too!

The bedroom tax attacks some of the most vulnerable and impoverished people in the country who by definition are the stereotypical ‘easy target.’  The same ‘easy target’ nobody ever thought would stand up and fight back yet are doing so in huge numbers and more power to them.

As more and more of the welfare reforms come into force such as the benefit cap in July and Universal Credit in October and all the other cuts of this austerity period come to light (and of course the in effect privatisation of the NHS) then such grassroots campaigns and groups will get bigger and stronger and more and more powerful.  The bedroom tax – as just one single issue – has galvanised and mobilised the dormant powerhouse that is the ordinary person that usually doesn’t give a toss about Politics.  Yet it is unlike the Poll Tax single issue which quickly saw mass grassroots movement wither away quickly.  There are so many more and more pernicious welfare reforms to come this year alone.  Very interesting times ahead!!

When Councils such as Liverpool who have come out with public statements such as we don’t like the bedroom tax and it has been imposed on us by central government – both valid points – then embark on an outrageous dirty tricks campaign such as this FOI bullshit response, they deserve to be pilloried and named and shamed.  This FOI bullshit tactic is one of many tactics they have and are employing and I will update the reader in numerous posts over the next week or so of each of them in turn.

As I have been writing about for many months now the only people with the power to get rid of the bedroom tax are the tenant and grassroots and communities who unite together.  Just this weekend I witnessed an interesting development of grassroots organisations coming together and I will update the reader on that soon too.

Anyone see the huge irony of the ‘lowly’ tenant reporting Labour-run LCC to three of the biggest Tory demons in government in Pickles, Grayling and IDS?

I wonder if the housing professional many of whom read my blogs have thought that the number of tenants in these embryonic anti bedroom tax groups far outnumber the number of members of the CIH and NHF combined!  That is not irony however; it is just one of the reasons why I have been saying that the social landlords will get their “comeuppance” when payment of Housing Benefit goes direct to the tenant from October this year.

Perhaps the financial buffoons who are dictating housing management policy at the moment by sending letters out threatening eviction over miniscule arrears may wish to consider that, just as Liverpool City Councillors will need to reflect on what their council is doing in this dirty tricks campaign!

***************************************************************************

UPDATE Tuesday 14th May

Cllr Paul Brant has responded to this in a comment below which I now include here and I respond to his comments in bold text

He writes: -

Dear Everyone

Thank you for your comments posted above. A few points which might assist.

1. The original complaint was ‘So imagine being told it will cost you, the tenant, between £10 and £15 to appeal the bedroom tax decision by Liverpool Direct staff’. This was communicated to me by email dated 2nd May as set out above. I am not familiar with this site, nor was i aware that the author of this blog was the author of the email. I enquired of LDL whether there was any charge for an appeal as alleged. I was told categorically that there was not.

The issue is not whether there is a charge, the issue is whether LDL staff state to members of the public there was a charge.  I have since been told of two further cases, one I whom I have spoken with and again they confirm the same wording as the previous two cases

2. Having received clarification, I tweeted a response making this clear.

I have previously commented on this tweet and make no further comment on it here as 140 characters is a limitation yet the tweet was clearly ambiguous and gave (perhaps) the wrong or at least not the impression I imagine Cllr Brant wanted to give.

3. I have asked for details of the individuals concerned from the author, so that an enquiry could be carried out into the particular circumstances of their interaction with LDL – and if they were given erroneous advice it could be corrected. These details have not been provided. If they are forwarded I will ensure their position is looked into.

Why does the Council need details of the individuals?  By that I mean under what procedures would the Council deal with this issue? Would this be a contractual dispute between LCC and LDL?  Would LCC treat this as a formal (and internalised) complaint?  I have put these points of procedure and how the Council would deal with this issue to Cllr Louise Baldock who raised the same point on the previous blog and as yet there has been no response.

4. In fact, any appeal of the decision is to the social security appeal tribunal, and there is no charge of such an appeal. There is also no charge for a ‘review’ (ie a request for the Council to look again at its Housing Benefit decision). I reiterate, there is not, and never has been any charge to appeal a Housing Benefit assessment.

This conveniently misses out a stage in the appeal process and whether LCC HB department agree with appeal or not.  But yet again the issue is not whether there is a charge, we are all agreed on that, the issue is that LDL counter staff have told tenants that there is a charge and as such deterred tenants from appealing the decision and from even seeking further information fr which they also said a charge applied.

5. In a post made yesterday, the author of the blogg has referred to a pro-forma set of questions being treated as a freedom of information request by the City. The issue of freedom of information requests is covered by Acts of Parliament and an independent Information Commisioner. This will be looked into by me tomorrow, however again if the details of the individuals concerned could be passed on it will help.

The naivety and incredulity of this response I find staggering.  LCC decided to view the request for further information and explanation of how they took the bedroom tax HB decision as a FOI request when LCC’s own benefit form states the claimant (the tenant) can ask for such explanation.  Treating the simple request for more information and explanation – sometimes called a statement of reasons – as a FOI request is nothing more than a deterrence tactic from LCC.  It is a disgraceful tactic all aimed at saving money to the Council and letting vulnerable tenants suffer.

6. The Council processes Housing Benefit on behalf of the Government, there is no cost or saving to the Council arising from the assessment of each Housing Benefit application. The Government pays the Housing Benefit bill, although the assessment of each application must be carried out in accordance with the statutory regulations.

Yet there is a significant cost of being asked to do a statement of reasons (more information or explanation) and / or review and re-assessment for the Council as Cllr Brant knows well and is overtly avoiding in this incredulous answer. There is also a significant cost to the Council of preparing for such an appeal at the Tribunal and the cost of a representing officer at that appeal Tribunal. 

Cllr Brant is also aware that I have estimated that cost to the Council before and that estimate was £1500 per case.  This was in my open letter to Mayor Joe Anderson here which I had the professional courtesy to email 24 hours ahead to Cllr Paul Brant before I released this on my blog. So to infer there is cost neutral to the Council is staggering in its incredulity!

All HB decisions also need to take account of legislation as well as (HB) regulations and I would ask Cllr Brant to state where in any guidance issued on the bedroom tax it says there is no definition of a bedroom.  A very relevant fact when the bedroom tax can only be imposed on a bedroom.  The guidance at paragraph 12 merely says that the government will not legislate for a future definition and cleverly does not say that there is a definition of what cannot be a bedroom already in legislation.

7. The Council makes the assessment using information provided to it by the applicant and and the landlord. In some cases landlords have changed the number of bedrooms the ascribe to each property – this information then led to a reduction in rent charged on the property (which then matched the HB assessment). For this reason it is good advice for a tenant to contact their landlord if they believe that their landlord has submitted an incorrect number of bedrooms. The decision is one for the Council, however if the landlord amends the information regarding the number of bedrooms that is likely to have an effect on the calculation.

This is, to use language Cllr Brant is familiar with, a legal fiction. What the tenant is appealing is NOT the number of bedrooms the landlord said the property has, the tenant is appealing the fact that the Council merely took the landlords word on this in the Council making the decision.  That is an entirely different matter. Perhaps Cllr Brant would care to give a legal view on the conflicted and vested interest a social landlord has in saying each property has as many bedrooms as possible

Information provided to the Council by the applicant?  At what time was this information provided by the tenant (the claimant) is a significant legal point as Cllr Brant can check with reference to Prout –v- Hammer 1924 which is still used today in housing law and states a decision needs to be based on facts at the time of the decision and NOT at any other time. So was this tenant-provided information at the last HB claim or when the tenant signed the original tenancy 30 years ago?  Whichever one it is would also be contrary to the highly prescriptive A4 of 2012 HB circular which forms the official guidance on the bedroom tax decision too.

However the most significant issue here is that LCC is sending the tenant off on a wild goose chase by telling them to go to the landlord.  I restate the issue is between the claimant (the tenant) and the decision-maker (the Council acting as the agent of DWP).  The landlord is a mere third party to the original decision and to any review or reconsideration of the original decision.  Further to that point the guidance issued to LCC and all other Councils states unambiguously that the landlords were under no obligation whatsoever to provide any information to the Councils (see paragraph 20)

The advice LCC has given to steer tenants away from a review or appeal by sending them to the landlords is misinformation and done to save LCC the cost of an explanation, a reconsideration and of appeal.

8. There is more information available at http://www.dalestreetnews.com/2013/05/07/advice-on-housing-benefit-changes/

Yes this link is precisely where LCC sends tenant claimants off on a wild goose chase with this misinformation…as Cllr Brant would know if he had bothered to actually read the blog post above!

9. If an appeal to a social security appeal tribunal is successful then the benefit levels will automatically be revised.

Liverpool City Council, and the Labour Party locally, and myself personally believe that the governments ‘Bedroom Tax’ is unfair, unworkable, inefficient and we believe it is a socially devisive and destructive policy. We remain opposed to it, and would like to see it repealed immediately.

Actions speak louder than words springs to my mind and I make no apologies if that is taken as flippant or trite.  It simply and accurately reflects the reality.

It rightly remains the right of anyone to blog or write on issues of concern, and I welcome informed civilised debate based on facts regarding these important issues. 

If any individual wishes to come to my surgery to discuss their individual situation then I would also be more than happy to try and assist.

Finally, I’m hoping to post this on the site, if it has appeared then I have been successful, otherwise I will try and find another way of making it public. I will also try and publish it on the entry of the blog from 12th May 2013.

Yours
Cllr Paul Brant

Summary

I welcome a civilised debate on the many issues above and based on the facts too and that is why my comments on the misinformation – sending tenants back to landlords – is of huge significance.  I have explained why this is wrong and why it is misdirection and why it is a legal fiction or vice. In some ways because this has come direct from LCC whereas the allegations against counter staff at One Stop Shops is against LDL employees who are merely partners of the Council. 

That misdirection and misinformation does deter tenants from asking for a review or an appeal as LCC is saying all grounds concerning a bedroom should go back to the landlord at first instance.  That is frankly a disgrace and is denying due process to the social tenant and also runs a huge risk of their subsequent appeals being determined as out-of-time.  In these circumstances the Council saves money on review and appeal and that makes this misdirection all the more serious. The Council makes financial gain from this misdirection and misinformation which it has put out by its own admitted hand!

What that also necessitates is for this matter not to be discussed on my blog, but raised and transparently considered as a matter of urgency under a far more formal framework of enquiry. Cllr Brant needs to address that point as well as what framework the Councils wishes to investigate the allegations I raised in a previous posy against the OSS counter staff.

Bedroom Tax – landlord finds 10% of decisions incorrect…and Council blames Viagra?

Just a short post here on another blog post I have seen by Adrian White Chair of Impact Housing in Cumbria. It says:

7^th May 2013

The Under-occupation penalty, that removes some housing benefit from social tenants with spare bedrooms, has now been in force for a month and we are beginning to see its implications.

At Impact Housing Association, where I am Chair, we have found that many of the tenants who are affected have yet to pay their contribution towards the rent. We have responded by visiting all affected tenants on our main estate at Salterbeck in Workington. What we found was that:

• ·        There is no hostility. Tenants understand this is government policy and are prepared to talk to housing officers. Information that has been provided by Impact and the local media has been understood.
• ·         One in ten of the tenants who had not paid the under-occupation penalty were not actually liable to pay – either because of incorrect assessments by the local authority or because of a change in circumstances such as the birth of a child.
• ·         While tenants are prepared to make arrangements to pay, many tenants are upset and worried about how they can pay the under-occupation penalty.

The highlighted section above – that 1 in 10 bedroom tax decisions made are wrong – is incredibly interesting.  Nationally that would be 66,000 decisions.

Yet 10% is perhaps a better way to view this in light of the DWP expecting just 3% to appeal the bedroom tax decisions.  More than 3 times that number have wrong decisions and I would presume based on not being liable to pay else there has been a huge boom in birth rate in Workington (and among social tenants alone!) which seems just as incredulous as the DWPs 3% figure!!

Could it be that Cumbria Council’s HB departments are particularly inept or is there a possibility the 10% figure could be replicated across the country? Have other social landlords had similar findings? Have other social landlords even done similar research? if not then why not? – The list of questions could go on and on – maybe Viagra has escaped into the Sellafield area and become like an airborne bacteria who knows?

This research needs to be published and be very much more informative and deserves a much wider audience? Adrian, any plans?

When is a bedroom a boxroom for the #bed

When is a bedroom a boxroom for the #bedroomtax ? (pdf) hsmonline.co.uk And 10 other blogs and files about bedroom tax in pdf as requested

The benefit cap breakdown by local autho

The benefit cap breakdown by local authority area http://hsmonline.co.uk/app/download/5792731285/Benefit+cap+affected+by+council+area.pdf Strange that DWP say 56k yet have sent 89k letters out!