It's something I want abolished.
And I want it abolished NOW.
And I want it abolished wholesale, not piecemeal.
I am often challenged about it being the Labour Government that came up with the size criteria that are used to calculate the number of bedrooms a household needs.
This was way back in 2008, with the introduction of Local Housing Allowance [LHA].
Yes, no question that those rules formed part of a comprehensive review about how HB operated in the private rental sector [PRS] following an announcement on October 2002 and pathfinder trials in November 2003.
So why no outcry at the time?
And why no demonstrations back then?
Probably the easy answer would be the emergence of social media in the interim.
But for a more thoughtful answer, I would like to point up some philosophical and practical points on social housing [or maybe that should be social homes], tenancies and the differences between the SRS and PRS.
Properties rented out by local councils [what my parents still refer to as 'corporation houses'] are covered by a secure tenancy - as a secure tenant, you can normally live in the property for the rest of your life, as long as you don’t break the conditions of the tenancy. Shelter have published a great advice guide to council tenancies
People renting in PRS are NORMALLY covered by an assured shorthold tenancy - this is the most common type of tenancy [although there are other models ]with private landlords. and usually last for 6 or 12 months and give you limited rights. Shelter have published a great advice guide to private tenancies.
Social rented housing is housing that is owned and managed by Local Authorities [LA] or Registered Social Landlords [RSL], as opposed to being privately owned.
Social rented housing is let out and managed to fulfil certain social objectives such as providing affordable housing, as opposed to being run on a purely commercial basis, as is the case with most private lets.
A key function of social housing is to provide accommodation that is affordable to people on low incomes. Rents in the social housing sector are kept low through state subsidy. The SRS is currently governed by a strictly defined system of rent control to ensure that rents are kept affordable.
Because there is insufficient social housing to go round, often people that qualify
for this have to find accommodation in the PRS. The trouble about this is that the cost is at the mercy of private landlords, who are in the business of making
For this reason, the Labour Government in 2008 introduced the Local Housing Allowance - this is the housing benefit paid to most tenants who rent from private landlords.
The amount of LHA you can get largely depends on how many bedrooms your home has, and the maximum rent allowed for properties in your area.
And the key word here is MAXIMUM.
If a tenant, who under the size criteria is entitled to 2-bedroom property, can find a 3-bedroom property at a rent lower than the LHA there is NOTHING to stop them
renting the 3-bed property.
The amount of LHA you can get depends on where you live.
When it was introduced in 2008, LHA was calculated as the median of a the distribution of rents in a 'Broad Rental Market Area'. The median rent is the rent that is halfway up the ordered distribution of rents for properties of the same size in a BRMA.
Rother District Council came up with a document that gave an good example of this in operation.
However, in the July 2010 emergency budget [see para 2.50 on p48], the Coalition came up with a new calculation of LHA. From October 2011. LHA rates
at set at the 30th percentile of rents in each BRMA rather than the median.
Taking the earlier example from Rother District Council, this would now value the LHA at £90 rather than £95.
So when Labour introduced LHA in 2008, it would have been easier to find affordable accommodation with more bedrooms than allowed for under the size criteria. Ergo, the size criteria WASN"T a bedroom tax, just a means of assessing a reasonable rent allowance for a BRMA.
It is also important or note that when LHA was introduced in 2008 here was a transition period - it was only new PRS tenants that were subject to the size criteria. Those on the previous regime that would have been deemed to be 'over occupying' under the size criteria did't face a cut in Housing Benefit at the time.
No such protection is in place when the Bedroom Tax reduction of Housing Benefit starts at the beginning of April.
The other main difference between SRS and PRS revolves around the fact that few properties in the PRS are specially adapted to assist households with a disabled family member.
And many HA , for a variety of reasons, in the past have actively managed their Social Housing stock such that often families requiring a 2-bedroom property are allocated 3-bed accommodation.
There are many anomalies in the application of size criteria in SRS, where there has been an assumption of a 'lifelong' tenancy.
That's why there is such outrage ahead of next month's reduction of Housing Benefit.
There are other ways to deal with the problem of under occupancy, but it is not by the blunt instrument that is the Bedroom Tax.
