The bedroom tax is dead. I’ll repeat that in case your eyes deceive you reader, the bedroom tax is dead!
There was a hugely significant appeal win in South Wales I discussed and posted about earlier and I called the bedroom tax a lesser spotted Dodo. My apologies reader the bedroom tax is ‘deader’ than that upon reading the actual judgment!
Overview
Tenant has bedroom tax applied as landlord and council say he has a 4 bed. Tenant says 2 smallest rooms are too small (60.7 and 69.4 sq/ft) and that they are used as an art room and as a study.
Tenant at tribunal raises the recently announced Bolton Upper Tribunal decision that gives a definition of bedroom. The Bolton judgment finally appeared officially here
Time to see what the Monmouth judgment says:
Paragraph 13
‘Bedroom’ is not defined by the legislation. This has most recently been pointed out in the Upper Tribunal decision 2014 UKUT 48 AAC. A(t) paragraph 19 of that decision the Tribunal helpfully refer to various definitions of a bedroom.”
Paragraph 19 said in simple terms that ‘bedroom’ is a room used as or furnished as sleeping accommodation.
Paragraph 14 of the judgment then goes on to say:
“The Tribunal finds that neither of the two smallest rooms are bedrooms. They do not contain beds, they are not used for sleeping, they can only be occupied by a child under 10, a half person…”
They do not contain beds, they are not used for sleeping...as social media will say OMFG!!!
So what does this mean?
- The first thing is that this judgment appears the first known judgment to use the Bolton definition of ‘bedroom’ to mean a room needs to be used as or furnished as a bedroom to be a bedroom.
- Secondly, ALL 523,000 bedroom tax decisions taken by councils before April 2013 saw those councils assume in every single case that if a room could be a bedroom then it was and is a bedroom. That assumption and sham of a decision making process which I have ranted and raved against all this time is now proven to be the sham I said it was.
- Thirdly, it means that the Bolton UT decision despite being made public in January 2014 applies to all of the bedroom tax decisions made so far.
- Fourthly, it provides a huge fillip and a huge necessity for every single one of those households affected by the bedroom tax should appeal and appeal right now. This is because your bedroom tax decision needs to be made on the individual facts of your case and the sham of a decision making process that saw every council take the view that if it COULD be a bedroom then it was a bedroom is legally unreliable.
- Fifthly, it DOES mean and does follow that your local council needs to KNOW that a room in your property is USED AS or is FURNISHED AS a bedroom and they can only do this by coming out to inspect. Yes that means my home city of Liverpool needs to inspect 10,750 or so properties to be ‘satisfied’ (and how ironic is that word in light of the U1/2014 Dear Reader!!) that your rooms are in fact bedrooms.
- Yet sixthly, no council has the time or the resources to go out and inspect every one of the properties that are bedroom tax affected! It simply cannot be done.
What flows from this is that no local council can make a bedroom tax decision for 2014/15 without having inspected a property. The decision cannot be made.
It also means that every single bedroom tax household can and should appeal their bedroom tax decision made for the 2013/14 financial year as there is no way that their council could have KNOWN that rooms in their properties were used as or furnished as a bedroom.
Yet it goes further than that!!
How can a single person have three bedrooms at all? Unless that tenant asserts they have watched every single episode of Star trek and can teleport so as to sleep in all 3 bedrooms at one time, they can only have one bedroom.
There is no such thing as under occupancy!!
A single tenant living in a property with 3 rooms that councils have to date said were ‘bedrooms’ may have 1 bedroom to sleep in and may furnished another room as a bedroom for a guest and so they may have a 3 bedroomed property but only 2 bedrooms and as such the bedroom tax if applicable would apply only to 2 bedrooms being in that property and not 3 as has been the case till now.
I could go on and on with what this means. However, what is far more important is that all those like myself that detest the pernicious bedroom tax policy MUST go out and MUST find every single bedroom tax affected household and tell them to APPEAL, APPEAL and APPEAL.
If they do and this judgment gives them every justification and legitimate grounds to do so then the bedroom tax is dead.
It is over, defunct, brown bread, deceased, late, departed, finished, done with, extinct, is moribund, it is pining for the fjords, it is demised, it is stunned, it is an ex-policy (it is an ex parrot..see!) Yet the dead parrot sketch well done reader and where did that take place…ah yes a shop in Bolton!!! …ooh I do love a bit of irony!!
Though personally I would prefer to see Iain Duncan Smith’s face when he reads this as that would a picture…a face that launches a thousand ships…all riddled with holes and made out of his discarded fag packets. Ships that sink without trace just like the bedroom tax policy!
But of course the IDS we all know will have a rant about these bloody judges and their interference….I can see him know…How dare they say bedroom has its ordinary everyday meaning! Just who do they think they are!! Council get that statement of reasons and send it to me now, personally, else ……I will let your imagination finish that one reader!
Sorry reader I must come across as a bit smug in my tone in this post. I am right now and I make no apologies for that whatsoever! When was the last time you were grinning like a Cheshire Cat when you were typing…oh sod that I’m digressing…the judgment is below.
Enjoy!!!
One final but important point. I have been getting praise for the work I have done in challenging the bedroom tax. This has not been possible without the fantastic work and fantastic people in ReClaim who deserve huge credit for the huge part they have played in getting to where we are now – the end of the bedroom tax.
This decision will see 523,000 households containing about 1,300,000 men women and children reclaim (pun fully intended) their lives and their homes, homes that no government has any bloody right whatsoever to stick their noses into. Now its time to rub their noses in it ….but no doubt they will still manage to find another teflon coated trough in which to put them!
Appeal people all 523,000 of you and lets ALL make sure we find all 523,000 of them and they all put in an appeal. Direct action, people power call it what you like but it is very legitimate and it is not flase hope as some stupidly say. All of us who want rid of this pernicious bedroom tax now know that is what we need to do, we have it in our hands to make sure we do, and that is to get every single bedroom tax affected household to appeal the bedroom tax decisions that so blight their lives, and when they do…il est morte!
Any donations will all go to writing more advice and blogs and enable more time to help more welfare reform victimised households in the bedroom tax, benefit cap and other areas such as sanctions
SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites) 
Hallelujah!
Smashing 🙂
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How do I go about applying and what documentation is required.
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The Government thought they were being so clever by refusing to define a bedroom..
There must be an awful lot of head-scratching going now as they try desperately to think how they can put a positive spin on this.
But when the hell will the shambolic state of this part of their flagship welfare policy finally get the national media coverage it deserves, exposing the lies, the denials and incompetence of IDS et al?
Keep up the good work, Joe. I know you are not the only person who has been working tirelessly on this, but you are the one who has succeeded in reaching ordinary people like me through your fantastic blogs
But if it does turn out to be true that the bedroom tax is in its death throws, you do realize that we will be expecting you to turn your efforts to benefit caps etc. …?
Quote: “But when the hell will the shambolic state of this part of their flagship welfare policy finally get the national media coverage it deserves, exposing the lies, the denials and incompetence of IDS et al? ”
Sorry, but it never will. Now let’s think why….
1. The owners of newspapers and broadcasting companies are, invariably, quite wealthy individuals, who tend to surround themselves with “yes”men for the purpose of grooming their own ego’s. These yesmen would never dare to say “no”, because it would be against their own interests and nature to so do.
2. Nearly all of these owners have their policies deeply rooted in the “jobs-for-the-boys” syndrome, and are highly conservative in their views and actions. Because of this, they tend to give an almost blinkered support to the present incumbents of our governing bodies (either they know them through the Gentleman’s Club. or they attended Eton, Harrow, Oxbridge with them, or know someone who did..)
3 Upsetting a Conservative Prime Minister, let alone disagreeing with one, will bring the full wrath of the Conservative Party/Old Schoolboys Network, upon you. This includes allegedly impartial Police Officers and Judges, who may be more vigilant if you happen to do anything wrong, or who pass sterner sentences on those who do wrongs against the Party. An example of this is how ” the bitch” crushed genuine grievances during the Thatcherite years
4. There is too much apathy in modern life, the masses have been brow -beaten into submission and resignation by the do-gooders, who have eroded our principals, and destroyed family morals, along with their incessant whining in published journals, which have, eventually, led to many trangressions of common sense and the incumbent laws, leading to reformation of those laws to their own personal suitability.
5 Much as we all would like to believe that the media is independant and unbiased, it ,too, is led and sustained by too many with their own agenda’s, be it political or personal.
These are the reasons this will never get the coverage it deserves, and people will never be advised by thier councils to appeal these decisions.
Councils will never advise tenants to appeal as its not their job and it costs local councils money if they do.
It needs friends, relatives, neighbours, grassroots groups and yes landlords to help and support tenants to appeal. Yet firstly it needs everyone to let every tenant know they have a very very strong case to appeal and just how simple that process is
Thanks for that Mousegran!!
Though in all seriousness I will be doing just that and to direct payments of HB to tenants which the vast majority do not want and to the monthly payment of welfare benefits which many will not be able to handle.
If I can find a way to fund the work this will involve then I will do it and be delighted to do it
I have posted this link to a few media sources on Twitter and i have also been posting news on the Facebook page of a news agency that I volunteer for Down Not Out. web site http://www.downnotoutleicester.wordpress.com News stories can be sent direct to them.
Joe,thank you for all the work you have done.
Why dont you do what some other blogger’s do, ie your followers donate to help keep your site funded, i am sure that many thousands of tenants myself included would be very happy to make small donations, we would of all been in s**t street without your help.
Wonderful news – and wonderful work from you 🙂 Thank you!
Reblogged this on Jay's Journal.
Not affected by this draconian policy myself, but your hard work is noted a bloody well done
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Reblogged this on sed30's Blog and commented:
Is it?
As you say, this case highlights a paradox at the heart of the bedroom tax: the policy intention obviously was to restrict HB in cases where the claimant has spare rooms that somebody else with a bigger family would use as a bedroom even if this claimant does not. But the only case law we have on bedrooms so far is telling us that current use by the current claimant weighs very heavily. If you take that to its logical conclusion it would indeed mean that a house containing more rooms than people cannot by definition have any spare bedrooms. There will still be people who do use the rooms as bedrooms in ways that the size criteria do not provide for – couples who cannot sleep in the same room, older same sex siblings with a bedroom each etc – so the bedroom tax would still affect them even if every “current use” appeal were to succeed.
We mustn’t forget that the two “current use” UT decisions involve private tenants who, in order to get the higher rate of LHA for an overnight carer, need to show that they do actually have a room that is used by the carer as a bedroom. So current use is obviously absolutely crucial in those cases. It remains to be seen whether the UT will take a slightly different approach in the different policy context of bedroom tax cases and look at whether the room is suitable for use as a bedroom generally, even if the current claimant does not use it that way. We will have to see.
Current use is certainly an important factor and may offer grounds for appeal to people who had previously assumed they had no chance – and it still isn’t too late to appeal against last year’s original decision.
Peter I dont see the UT cases being private tenants as being a major issue as the essence and substance is they define or set a benchmark of what ‘bedroom’ is and means.
Where I see the real significance is how this prevents local councils from having another sham decision making process this coming financial year as after Bolton they can longer hold to their strategy of if it COULD be a bedroom then it IS.
Every council has to consider Bolton in its decision making yet how can they? I have spoken with three councils this week who admitted (verbally and not as yet n writing) that they see no option but t have to inspect, yet at the same time they rightly say they cant afford to inspect! Proverbial and fan.
As you rightly say every current bedroom tax decision can still be appealed under the 13 month rule and they should ALL be appealed as those decisions were sham ones based on a blanket policy of it is can be a bedroom then it is. Every single case even if the tenant has 500 ‘spare bedrooms’ the size of wembley football pitches has legitimate cause to appeal the sham decisions made.
For me the ONLY question is how do we find all 523,000 so they can fill in a very simple template letter asking their council for a late review and if not changed an appeal ensues.
The bedroom tax IF tenants appeal IS dead
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Brilliant news!! Thank goodness we have people like you Joe fighting our corner. Can`t thank you all enough for the information, template letters and advice given. I`m just waiting for my hearing date, having started my appeal last April with Bolton Council. I`ve used the Bolton UT case in my appeal and look forward to the outcome.
Actually folks hate to burst your bubble but its a First Tier Tribunal judgment, which are held before one judge. Upper Tier Tribunals have three judges. In fact if you look at the header it quite clearly says First Tier Tribunal. How the author missed it is beyond me!!!
Upper Tribunal normally only has one Judge as well, but it is a level higher up in the judicial hierarchy and its decisions are recognised as creating binding precedent. As it stands we have two UT decisions on a slightly different issue affecting private tenants, and we have this FtT decision showing how at least one FtT judge sees the UT decisions as applying to bedroom tax cases. It isn’t case law but it shows what kind of arguments any FtT might be persuaded by – so it’s a useful decision for appellants to be guided by when they draft their appeal. If it worked in this case, there is every reason to think it might work in other cases until we start getting UT decisions in bedroom tax cases.
A few comments around that DWP will appeal Bolton which just like the naysaying ‘bubble bursters’ above fail to think straight.
IF DWP appeal Bolton then they are appealing a judge was wrong to use a dictionary!! How can you appeal what every dictionary the world over says!!
Also until DWP embarks on any wild goose chase of an appeal the Bolton decisions stand and are predecents that all FTT judges and all councils have to fully consider.
The only way the bedroom tax is not as dead as the Norwegian Blue Parrot pining for the fjords is apathy from tenants not appealing.
Tenant, how does your council KNOW what you use your (upstairs) rooms for? If you can find an answer to say they do KNOW then don’t appeal…yet you cant!
Ryan you need to read the article!!! The Bolton Upper Tier Tribunal has defined what a bedroom is!!!
Thank you so much Joe for all your hard work, you deserve a medal!
Pat – I have added a donate button at the end of the post above and on the “About” page after resisting for over 12 months on this so that more time and research can be put in to helping get rid of this pernicious tax and as Mousegran says above perhaps the benefit cap is next (although scores of blogs from 2012 about it in archives)
Then onto direct and monthly payments and sanctions and then the next back of a fag packet policy too
Joe i have made a small donation to you, thank you once again for your help.
Reblogged this on SPeye and commented:
How can we reach every tenant so they can appeal the #bedroomtax?
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Bedroom Tax Dead??
If you’re affected – appeal NOW!! You have 13 months from the original decision, so time is of the essence.
APPEAL NOW!!
Well done to all concerned. I bet IDS will, even now, be working on a StatutoryInstrument to try and undo this and save the train wreck that is his career
By the time he drafts one will the bedroom tax still be here?
More to the point,will he?
He doesnt do draughts, only hot air
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Can you send this to the national press so that as many people as possible receive this information and can act on it as soon as possible? The government sure as hell won’t be publicising this news widely!
Joe,
While I agree with much that you say about the berdroom tax, I’ll differ with you about appealing *every* case.
There are two fundamental arguments which have emerged in the applicability debate:
1) The room isn’t a bedroom.
2) The room is a bedroom but is necessary.
In other cases, where there is neither a dispute about the rooom being a bedroom, nor an argument that the extra bedroom is needed for some partcular reason, then it is unwise to suggest everybody should appeal.
While this might have the effect of ‘clogging’ the appeals system and making the HB administration almost impossible to run, it would be neither sound advice or practice. The result might very well be further limitations on the right of appeal generally, which neither of us would want.
Gareth, I see your concern but entirely disagree with the points you make.
Firstly, not all tenants will ever appeal, it just will not happen and despite all of then having legitimate grounds to appeal.
Secondly, clogging up the system may well be a by-product but that has never been an intention or aim just a consequence of the real issue which is every bedroom tax affected tenant has huge legitimate reason to appeal.
Councils took a strategy of if it can be a bedroom it is and we are applying the bedroom tax. That was an is an utter outrage. The councils never ought to ascertain FACT and that is what counts and indeed is the essence of the ‘overriding objective’ of the tribunal service.
Councils, without inspecting each and every property for room usage, which is the only way they can establish fact shafted 523,000 households containing 1.3 million men women and children by imposing the bedroom tax based on assumption
1.3m people have had devastating consequences of a decision made on the basis of each council not getting off their arses to check fact and not willing or able to send the resources necessary to make a factual decision. Instead they merely subjected 1.3m people to miss one meal a day or be permanently cold with lasting health damage (?) as they could not and would not make decisions based on fact.
That is huge legitimacy for every tenant to appeal.
You appear to be saying too that a tenant should have to justify using a room other than as a bedroom. I totally reject that and while I tend to agree that room usage should be reasonable, whatever use a tenant makes of a room in THEIR property is their choice. A dining room is not an reasonable choice of purpose or is a study or a craft room or a storage room (and especially in a flat which tend to have less storage than a house). If the tenant uses one room to keep African Grey Parrots and another to keep Norwegian Blue Parrots then possibly I see your point about reasonable use. But apart from extremes such as that there are so many ‘reasonable’ uses of rooms other than as a bedroom.
YET the councils by adopting the sham of if it could be a bedroom it is also say a dining room is unreasonable and so is a study / computer room unreasonable and a storage room is unreasonable too. Sorry I didnt think the purpose of social housing was to keep human like battery hens!
The original decisions ignored fact yet the tribunals will rightly not allow that. They also imposed the bedroom tax through assumption and cost expediency and again the tribunals correctly wont allow that. All bedroom tax decisions were and are a sham and every single tenant has legitimate reasons to use their right of appeal and should do so.
If using your right to appeal loses that right then that is just the reactive response of the despot and in the above brief outline if they are not legitimate reasons to appeal then there are no legitimate reasons.
Joe, I’m afraid you’re missing the main point. In order to win an appeal, people will have to show the the original decision was wrong. They will not win if the decision was correct, regardless of the process used to make that decision.
I’d be very surprised if the UT were to say ‘the room is a bedroom, the LA said it was a bedroom but because they didn’t look at it, we’ll decide it isn’t a bedroom’.
Gareth,
The UT decision in Bolton gives a definition of bedroom that FTTs and LAs have to consider strongly. The Monmouth case looked at this and ruled that two purported bedrooms were not bedrooms because of room usage – something which every decision failed to consider.
The UT said as did FTT in Monmouth that the room is whatever it is used for which councils simply do not know and did not ask in makign the decisions.
They simply cannot assume a room is a bedroom just because it is expedient for them to do so. This is a public authority administering a public benefit, they cannot make it up as they go along yet that is what they did.
The overriding objective of the tribunal has to come into play and when you add in the other issues such as blanket policy, choosing to believe a vested interest and as I have pointed out tonight following A4/2012 guidance and not the regulations.
B13(5) saya bedroom has to be big enough for a couple which presupposes a double bedroom so the regulations do have a minimum room size unlike para 12 of the A4 in which DWP assert they do not.
Yet no council asked landlords if the purported bedrooms could accommodate a couple or for any room sizes -so the sham process again defies what the regulations say.
Amen
If the government (us) are paying the rent or a portion of it, they (we) have EVERY right to poke their noses in. If they need inspectors to check houses, I will do it free for them.
What every single house paying bedroom tax? Who are you the mafia haha. You need to remember you (gov) actually work for us (bedroom tax payers). you sound like a bloody Nazi. You can’t pick and chose the laws and regulations as you please you know. Oh and by the way the gov (the most corrupt ever) don’t pay part of our rent the taxpayers do! And by voting tory they voted for the pleasure of doing so so shouldn’t moan about it now. If the Tory voters don’t wish to pay to support the vulnerable people why vote for a gov who makes them exactly that?
*do exactly that it should say. Oh and one more thing I’d never allow someone to snoop around MY home -especially someone who thinks a government is there to bully starve and demonize the vulnerable and disabled people. I was brought up to respect and care for people who needed it which is why as a taxpayer I didn’t mind MY taxes going to support others less able. I guess not everyone had the luxury of decent parents who taught their offspring right from wrong. Probably far too busy entertaining to actually parent their own children. I’d love to know how long it would take you to visit tens of thousands of houses. Ideas of grandeur I’d say old chap.
How do I go about appealing ?
Is there an on line facility, do I go to my local council (Rother and really awful) or the C.A.B ?
Good work Jo – I’m spreading the word.
Don’t forget there is another way to kill off the bedroom tax we can all help with as Ian Lavery MP has a 10 minute bill on Tuesday . Please contact your MP to ask them to be there and support this. Last time there was a majority of 27 so we do have a real chance of getting rid of it without everyone having to appeal.
Please share this around.
Thanks.
One of many challenges and happy to share
We still have to go to court of appeal because our room is used/defined as a bedroom for Warren’s overnight carers to sleep in as and when we need them to.
Unless there’s something I’ve missed… will see what our legal people say tomorrow.
This is only a first tier tribunal. I shall wait with interest as to whether any cases shall go to the upper tier!
If you had noticed from the post this first tier tribunal implemented in its judgment the precedent the Upper Tribunal set in the Bolton case of a bedroom is a room used or furnished as a bedroom
It is not a direct precedent though, and the Upper Tribunal might distinguish the Bolton case. I think it is a bit premature to say the under occupancy penalty is killed off. In any case, if the UT did follow the Bolton decision there is still the Court of Appeal, or the Government could simply re-legislate, as they have in order to close the pre-1996 loophole. I think you should be careful not to raise peoples hopes too high
The DWP has stated it will not appeal Bolton
You say ‘The DWP has stated it will not appeal Bolton’ – I wasn’t suggesting that they would, what I meant was that other side could appeal against your FTT decision, or if not yours, one like it. With respect to the opinion of Judge Rolt, I do not think Bolton is necessarily binding on bedroom tax cases (a point other posters have made). I am not saying that the judge was wrong or not entitled to conclude that it did, but I can think of other FTT judges would take a different view – in my experience they vary to a great extent. You got a fantastic decision, but please don’t get carried away and raise the hopes of people who aren’t so well acquainted with the tribunal system as you to an unrealistic level, I don’t think that is entirely fair.
Raising hopes? Hopes are raised, and rightly, when judges makes decisions such as in Bolton and especially when they apply the room usage aspects of it in Monmouth.
Just as Fife decisions gave hope for room size appeals and just as Redcar, Hereford and Glasgow raised hopes for a room each for a disabled couple. Just as…and so on.
What Bolton UT decision does and rightly is to say the term ‘bedroom’ has its man on the clapham omnibus meaning. It becomes subjective and broader in scope as to what is reasonable and can be reasonably argued as NOT being a bedroom.
The government has brought this on by steadfastly refusing to define bedroom and so leaving it to the courts. Now that the courts have defined it comes down to individual facts in each individual case – the tenant reality – who are arguing against a sham of a decision taken on the if it COULD be a bedroom then it IS a bedroom expedient approach all councils adopted originally.
I now note nobody is arguing against my long held and oft-stated view that every tenant has legitimate cause to appeal because of this sham.
I am aware some are saying Bolton is not necessarily binding, the same people who say remind thet every FTT decision is not and the same that seek to dampen and discourage appeals when there is rampant legitimacy to appeal because of the sham decision-making policy evident in all of the original decisions.
,
Well my MP is IDS! So not much chance of getting him to support getting rid of the bedroom tax!! However, I have just emailed our borough for a response to this blog post! 🙂 I met IDS at a surgery a few weeks ago and wrote up the experience. After a battle I am going again next week! Keep an eye on my timeline/blog for a response!
I have also wondered why houses/flats here are advertised with x amount bedrooms. In Germany, it simply states x amount rooms; after all, who the heck know what you’re going to use your rooms for.
In Scotland it normally says rooms (apartments) and across most of mainland Europe properties are advertised by floor space, eg 90 sq/m apartment 110 sq/m apartment. In UK a social landlord can say 3 bed and its unchecked yet if a private landlord says 3 bed its checked!!
It is, of course, a non-binding First Tier Tribunl decision…..don’t get too excited, please read the response in Nearly Legal.
If you read the post you will see the FTT took on board a UT judgment (Bolton) on what a bedroom is in this Monmouth case.
Everyone is welcome to their opinion yet I disagree with Giles’s view on this Monmouth case as have a number of HB experts too.
I have a healthy respect for Giles opinion and we have disagreed in the past over bedroom tax issues. Giles stated many months ago that room size would not factor into tribunal decisions mainly on premise that you cant read across HA 1985 into HB regs. Yet now as room size decisions are coming in thick and fast his view has modified. Of course my view on room usage and its importance could also be wrong yet the next few weeks will tell as the Bolton UT decisions are being put under every tribunal judges noses.
Tribunals also operate in a different way to civil courts no CPR and the ‘overriding objective’ being two key differences and see this for example – http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/tribunals/general/consolidated-sec-rules-nov2013.pdf – for a more detailed view of the framework in which they operate.
Then there is the practical issues of can a local council actually make new bedroom tax decisions for 2014/5 with this ‘definition’ of bedroom?
I can see plenty of decisions being made at FTT which apply the room usage arguments and this ground will see more successful appeals than room size grounds this year.
I can’t thank you enough for posting this tribunal decision. I am currently fighting the Redbridge council with the very same issue with a severely disabled wife. We have a box room that is being used for storage of her medical equipment. Not only have we been paying £90 a month since April 2013, but they have recently increased it to £128 per month! I was recently informed that we qualify for bedroom tax because our income was £50 more than our outgoings require. BLOODY DESPICABLE!
ok.. HOW do i make an appeal??
me too how do i appeal
This is truly fantastic news that will long reverberate throughout the corridors of those involved with the creation of such swingeing, unscrutinised, indiscriminate and unfair Political Policymaking without due consideration to the Rule of Law in this country, so heartiest congratulations to Joe Halewood for all his hard work and tireless efforts to restore Common Sense to the interpretation of the existing Legal System as it currently stands, and a degree of Fairness to those in our society who have suffered – and paid the most for the incompetence of IDS and the ignorance and stupidity of this arrogant and heartless Government … Shame!
I too, firmly believe that the huge successes that Joe Halewood and his supporters have achieved through the Courts should at least, be recognised by the Kingdom’s National press and the highest accolades that we possess be accorded him – so I too, shall spread the word as much as my own humble capacity will allow.
Steve Acutt
Don’t tell me i am to late!