Housing Benefit and Disabled People

Debate between Ian C. Lucas and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I welcome the Minister to her place and offer belated congratulations on her appointment. I wish to raise with her the effect of the changes to housing benefit on people in the social rented sector who are deemed to be under-occupying a property. I thank my constituents John Turner and Matthew Hancock, Karen Armitage of Stafford and Rural Homes, and my colleague Pauline Ingall for bringing this matter to my attention.

From April 2013, size criteria for new and existing working-age housing benefit claimants will be introduced; they will replicate the size criteria that apply to housing benefit claimants in the private rented sector. The Department for Work and Pensions’ impact assessment estimates that out of 660,000 claimants affected by the new rules, some 420,000 are disabled. The impact assessment offers the explanation that

“Disabled claimants are, on average, older than non-disabled claimants. One consequence of this is that disabled claimants are also less likely to live in households with children… Fewer people living in a household means that large accommodation cannot be justified under the size criteria, and Housing Benefit entitlement is reduced.”

In the debate on the Welfare Reform Bill last year, I raised the matter of disabled people sometimes needing more rooms than provided for by the rules. One family in my constituency with disabled adults and children needed separate rooms for the couple and a separate room for one of the children under the age of 10. The then Minister for disabled people, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), gave a clear answer. She said that

“if a disabled person has the need for an overnight carer, additional rooms can be allocated. Indeed, if there are disabled people in the house who require rooms, there will be clear support there for them to be able to have those rooms.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2012; Vol. 539, c. 937.]

I also raised the question of adaptations, which have sometimes had many thousands of pounds spent on them to enable a disabled person to live in the property. It does not make sense for people to move from such properties to others that will themselves require costly adaptations. I therefore welcomed the fact that of the additional £30 million per annum being added to the discretionary housing payment scheme by the Government from April this year, £25 million is intended to be used

“specifically to assist those disabled claimants who are in properties where a significant adaptation has been made to cater for their individual needs.”

I have contacted the two councils in my constituency to ask them how they intend to allocate the additional funding. Stafford borough council has been working with housing associations to identify tenants affected by the new legislation. It will be concentrating its extra funding, which I estimate to be some £75,000, on disabled people whose property has been adapted and on foster carers; the support will be for 12 months. South Staffordshire district council, which has an additional £64,000 funding, will give short-term support, one to three months, to disabled people with property adaptations. The support is short term, because the council wishes to assess the situation before it commits to the longer term.

Both councils have been proactive in arranging mutual exchanges of properties between those who have spare rooms and those who are overcrowded—they have been doing exactly what the Government wish to encourage. However, both councils face serious shortages of one-bedroom properties for couples or singles, as much of the housing in the area has two bedrooms. That raises two questions for the Minister. First, can councils be sure that they will continue to receive at least the level of additional funding each year for discretionary housing payments that has been granted in 2013-14? Given that much of the funding will be for disabled claimants in adapted properties in which they are likely to live for many years, the need for DHPs will continue. Secondly, is the guidance for the assessment of the number of rooms required by disabled people being set out in the terms that the Minister used to me in the House last year? In addition to the case I mentioned, there are instances where disabled people live on their own or as a couple in a two-bedroom property with little or no storage space, and they tend to use the second room, which is often small, to store equipment that they need—perhaps a wheelchair or a mobility scooter. My understanding of the Minister’s comments in the House last year is that the second room should not be counted as a bedroom.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a compelling case. Some of the individuals affected are severely disabled and the uncertainty that he has outlined is creating great worry, and not just for them; some parents of disabled people are also concerned about the situation. Is it not imperative that an element of certainty is introduced to the system?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and I agree with him. Certainty is vital, which is why I am asking for clarification, and hopefully clarification in the terms used by the then Minister for disabled people in the House of Commons last year.