Borough Council pay out £1m more in housing benefit

[dutchman]

Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council is having to fork out an extra £1 million in housing benefit.



Over the past two years the local authority has seen an ever-increasing bill.

The figures were highlighted when Councillor Bill Hancox spoke at a full council meeting and said: “Can Cllr Dennis Harvey tell us how many extra housing benefit claimants there has been since 2010 and its impact on those claimants and this council?”

Cllr Harvey said that there had been an increase of 14 per cent with the number of housing benefit claimants in 2010 being 7,843 and it is now 8,937.

This means that the benefit bill rocketed to approximately £1 million over two years.

Cllr Harvey said: “We are responsible for administering and paying out housing benefit, but at the moment claim back the cost from the government.

“However, changes to Welfare Reform are likely to have a significant impact on those residents who claim housing benefit.

“From April 2013 a whole raft of changes are due to come into force.

“Just to give everyone an idea of the scale of changes:

*221 people in Nuneaton and Bedworth will be affected by the shared room rate being applicable to all single people under 35, not 25 as at present.

* 262 people will be affected by changes to the Employment Support Allowance contribution.

* 725 people will be affected by working age customers who ‘under occupy’ their home.

* 1,959 will be affected by the changes whereby Disability Living Allowance will be replaced by Personal Independence Payments under new criteria. Some may no longer qualify.

* 12,124 people will be affected by localisation of Council Tax support, which will not only affect this huge number of residents, but may mean a further enormous funding gap for this council as we are not an area of higher incomes, unlike many parts of Southern England.

“In addition an unknown figure will be affected by the new, as yet unknown, Benefit Cap, as housing benefit may well be affected.

“A huge proportion of our residents will be directly adversely affected and all our Council Tax payers may find that this borough has to find enormous amounts of money from the General Fund where we have to apply a local scheme.”

[dutchman]

I came across some the above changes only by accident as there was no public announcement that I'm aware of?

For example an offical of Whitefriars Housing has told me that from next April Housing Benefit will be paid directly to tenants and not to councils or housing associations as at present. He estimates that as many as 25% of tenants wil simply refuse to hand over the rent money and face eviction. The new system already applies to those in private rented accommodation and has proven to be a disaster with many landlords now refusing to accept Housing Benefit claimants of any kind.