Housing: Spare Room Subsidy

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Freud

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

This policy is about making sure that people who are living in oversized accommodation take the decision either to downsize or find the funds to run the extra rooms. That is how this policy works, and we can see in this study that people are now making adjustments. There are substantial moves in various areas in terms of downsizing and finding work between the interim report and this final report.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, is it not in everyone’s interests that there should be a better match between household size on the one hand and the size of houses and flats on the other, to avoid overcrowding and underoccupation? Does the survey not show a fivefold increase in the number of working-age tenants seeking to downsize? Does this not show that the policy is working?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, we have seen a substantial number of people downsizing—45,000 people have downsized within the social rented sector and another 12,000 have moved into the private rented sector. The number of people who have registered for downsizing is now running at 16%. Noble Lords may remember that when this policy started it was estimated from the surveys that about 20% of people would want to do so. We are well on the way to people making this adjustment. Other people, however, are looking to earn more money and to work. That is one of the factors, but not a major one, in some of the record employment levels we are now seeing.