Housing: Under-occupancy Charge

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, looking at the position in the round, people move from low-cost social housing to higher-cost private housing, but that allows another family who may have come out of private housing to go into social housing. You have to look at the bill as a whole, and the saving on this particular part of the bill is running at £0.5 billion a year.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

Can the Minister explain what the Government are doing with housing associations concerning the removal of the spare room subsidy?

[Lord Freud]

Local authorities and housing associations have responded with a range of programmes to manage the various benefit changes, including this one. It is instructive to look at the reports and accounts put out by housing associations. Affinity Sutton says:

“Overall, the impact on us has been less than expected”.

Sovereign says that a team of 12 tenancy support advisers has kept its arrears low; Midland Heart says that the year has concluded with arrears continuing to fall; A2Dominion says that,

“despite welfare reform changes, rent arrears have fallen”;

and Orbit housing group says:

“Our arrears have decreased … despite the impact of the spare room subsidy”.