Interesting article in the Guardian linking to a spreadsheet of estimated losses per tenant expected from the coalition's housing benefit cuts.
These are figures released by the DWP so make of that what you will but it's clearly not alarmist hyperbole drawn up by a bunch of anarchists or whoever governments like to blame these days.
I've taken an extract showing the effects on the three East Midlands cities. For a bit of a giggle I included leafy Rutland too. Guess which one is affected the least?
LA S/R 1br 2br 3br 4br 5br
Derby UA -4 -12 -9 -13 -14 -26
Leicester UA -3 -7 -7 -8 -15 -28
Nottingham UA -15 -12 -13 -18 -30
Rutland UA -2 -5 -7 -8 -15
So, unless you live in a shared house it's not looking too good for Nottingham tenants. The only mitigation is an increase in the budget for Discretionary Housing Payments. This doesn't bode well considering how well these have been administered before.
Useful information... I know of at least one family that is going to be disappointed given the hurdles they had to jump through. Firstly they were barely eligible because of child benefit being counted as income, then rules changed and they qualified. Now it looks as if they will lose at least 25%. When is this expected to take effect?
ReplyDeleteThe change that is most likely to effect private tenants in Nottm starts in Oct 11, that's the one that bases max HB on 30th percentile of rents in the local area.
ReplyDeleteThere's a rule that limits HB to a max of 4 bedrooms regardless of the size of your household starting in April 11.
More info here from Shelter
http://bit.ly/bhArVl