Housing: Underoccupancy Charge Debate
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Lord Bishop of St Albans
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Housing: Underoccupancy Charge
Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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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.