Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Debate between Lord Bishop of St Albans and Lord Freud

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I will have to repeat the answer that I gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

Can I take the Minister back to the first question of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about panic rooms? His answer was that there is information out there but when someone has had a panic room installed through a sanctuary scheme, there is a clearly defined problem. It seems that we need to find some way to make sure that that advice automatically gets to them. Has the Minister considered any way in which we can encourage local authorities to have a duty to give that information about the discretionary housing payments?

[Lord Freud]

The information on this is disseminated. When people are written to, informing them that they are subject to the removal of the spare room subsidy, the information is made available to them on that occasion. Awareness of that is growing.

Housing: Spare Room Subsidy

Debate between Lord Bishop of St Albans and Lord Freud

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We have seen a reduction in the numbers affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy. They are down by nearly 100,000—by 18% or 98,000. Half of those have downsized—45,000 within the social sector and 12,000 moving into the private sector. We have seen 20% of people looking to increase their earnings. That figure goes up to 63% for those affected who are unemployed. So, no, we will not be changing this policy.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I welcome the final report’s findings that local authorities are becoming more efficient in the allocation of direct housing payments. However, it has also revealed that there is a postcode lottery. Some local authorities are making payments to all claimants while others have imposed quite strict criteria. Does the Minister agree with me that it is important that this should be placed on an equal footing so that in whatever part of the country people live, they receive exactly the same treatment, irrespective of the locality?

[Lord Freud]

We have approached helping people who are hard cases through the discretionary housing payment route, which has been found sound in the courts. The reason for that is that local areas are best placed to determine how best to help people in their own areas. They are doing it in a variety of ways, but that reflects their views on how best to do it in their areas.

Housing: Underoccupancy Charge

Debate between Lord Bishop of St Albans and Lord Freud

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Yes, the current plan is to publish the report before the end of the year. It does incorporate the regional effects, and I will take the noble Lord’s points about how thoroughly it does so when I go back and talk to the team. For very obvious reasons, I have not seen what is inside that report before it is published, but I will transmit those thoughts to the team.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, back in 2013 the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee urged that social housing in rural areas should be excluded from the underoccupancy charge, because of the near impossibility of finding alternative accommodation in many rural areas, where it simply is not available for people to downsize. Already people in rural areas have higher social and housing costs, and there is some evidence that the underoccupancy charge is pushing some families further into debt. Will the Minister tell the House whether Her Majesty’s Government would be willing to undertake a reconsideration of their policy and exclude social housing in rural areas from this measure?

[Lord Freud]

We are actually sympathetic to that point about rural communities, and we ramped up the amount of discretionary housing payments which were particularly targeted at the most remote rural areas, so that the policy could be dealt with by that route.