Housing Benefit Entitlement

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson]

It is very distressing, and the point that my hon. Friend raises again about the lack of one-bedroom properties will be starkly set out in the next part of my speech.

Livin, which used to be called Sedgefield Borough Homes, has about 8,500 properties, and about 1,609 of those households will be affected by the bedroom tax: 1,365 households are under-occupied by one bedroom and the remainder are under-occupied by two bedrooms. Livin only has 204 available one-bedroom properties. East Durham Homes—another housing association, which covers the communities of Wingate, Wheatley Hill, Thornley and Deaf Hill in my constituency—has said that it would take seven years for it to re-house all the tenants affected by the bedroom tax. For Livin, the period required to re-house affected tenants would be much longer. Both East Durham Homes and Livin estimate that the bedroom tax would mean that the 2,977 of their households that would be affected would have to find almost £1.8 million from elsewhere to go towards paying the rent on their existing homes, or the people in those households would have to go into arrears or move out, but there are not enough one-bedroom properties.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My constituency, which is a neighbouring constituency to that of my hon. Friend, is similarly affected. There is another housing association in my constituency, Dale and Valley Homes, and there are a further 875 people affected in this way. Some of those individuals are being pushed to live on as little as £23 a week. Does he not think that that is utterly disgraceful?

[Phil Wilson]

At the beginning of the 21st century, it obviously is. Bishop Auckland, the constituency that my hon. Friend represents, shares some of the statistics regarding Livin, because it covers both our constituencies, and it is concerned because of the proposal that its rent arrears could double from 4% to 8% in the future. In a briefing note prepared by Livin, it said:

“Rent arrears will increase, affecting cash flow, which could mean that the loan facility made available to Livin for improvements and development of the housing stock may be required to fund administration. This could only be considered as a temporary position and Livin would need to readjust its spending to avoid borrowing for ongoing day to day costs.”

I said earlier that the impact of these new rules would be arbitrary on families and communities. Here are a couple of examples. The DWP’s equality impact assessment shows that 66% of claimants who will be affected by the bedroom tax are disabled. Although recipients of disability living allowance are exempt from the overall benefit cap, the DWP has chosen not to exempt them from the bedroom tax.