The UK Bedroom Tax

Will this be Cameron's Poll Tax?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21321113

read this one for how it affects people. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-condemns-brutal-bedroom-1714231

Dear American ilxors this is why we call the tories "cunts".

This really is disgusting.

NICOLA STURGEON has warned that David Cameron’s bedroom tax will hit the poor as badly as Margaret Thatcher’s hated poll tax.

She condemned the Tory MPs backing the benefits clawback and claimed they are enjoying the misery their cuts are inflicting on some of Britain’s most vulnerable people.

Around 100,000 Scots living in social housing will lose up to a quarter of their benefits in just a few weeks’ time under the bedroom tax.

Sturgeon labelled the benefit cut as pernicious and vowed to scrap it in Scotland if the country votes for independence.

She spoke after the Sunday Mail revealed last week how 59-year-old Iris Henderson, who was born with dwarfism, faces losing a quarter of her housing benefit unless she moves out of her home.

Iris has lived in her three-bed home in Cumbernauld, near Glasgow, for 35 years and has spent thousands of pounds adapting it to ease her day-to-day life.

Sturgeon said that she has asked a group of experts to examine replacing the bedroom tax ahead of next year’s independence referendum.

She compared it to the poll tax, which saw a flat rate charge paid by every adult – saving rich people money at the expense of the poor.

Sturgeon said: “I think the bedroom tax is one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation introduced in Scotland since the poll tax.

“There is a difference between saying, ‘We have to cut this budget because we really have no choice’ and, ‘We are glad we have to cut this budget’. I think more Tories fall into the latter category.”

The new tax will mean social housing tenants with spare bedrooms must move to a smaller home or lose up to 25 per cent of housing benefit.

The UK government claim the bedroom tax will cut the housing benefit bill by more than £500million a year.

But Sturgeon has warned that the new tax could actually end up costing the taxpayer more.

She said: “I predict it will not be as successful in reducing the housing benefit as they think.

“If your housing association doesn’t have a smaller home for you to move to, you can’t afford the extra cash to cover the cut and you don’t fancy taking in a stranger as a lodger, then your only option, other than become homeless, is to go the private rented sector.

“The rent for a one-bed flat in the private sector will be higher than a two-bed housing association flat and you will get full housing benefit because you’re not under-occupying.

“I think they will find these changes will not impact on housing benefit. In fact, they could have the opposite effect.”

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: “It looks like the SNP are prepared to promise anything and everything to win the referendum, but people will expect to see the cost of the SNP promises.

“Making promises without prices attached is easy but showing they are affordable is a lot more difficult.

“The reality is independence will make it a whole lot harder to deliver on what the SNP promise.”

CASE STUDY - IRIS HENDERSON

DAVID CAMERON has been asked to personally intervene in the case of the disabled woman whose plight was highlighted in the Sunday Mail last week.

We told how Iris Henderson, 59, who was born with dwarfism, faces losing a quarter of her housing benefit unless she moves out of her specially adapted house.

http://i4.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article1714212.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Iris%20Henderson%20in%20the%20kitchen%20of%20her%20Cumbernauld%20flat-1714212.jpg

Now, Iris’s MP Gregg McClymont has written to the Prime Minister urging him to look again at the case.

The Labour MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said: “It was certainly progress that David Cameron and Scottish Secretary Michael Moore have agreed this week to investigate individual cases.

“I will certainly be writing to both to ensure that they are well aware of the challenges Iris is facing.

“Her case is exactly the kind of story that should help change the government’s mind on this.

“They have to act. More and more people each week are starting to realise they are being penalised by the bedroom tax.

“I will be making sure the mailbags of ministers are packed.

“They will not be under any illusions about the impact this is having on some of Scotland’s most vulnerable people.”

Iris said: “I would be elated if I was allowed to continue living in the family home that my daughter grew up in and in the company of
neighbours who have been friends for many years.

“If Mr Cameron turfs me out, I will lose that vital support.”

If anyone takes in a lodger they will lose the benefit. Its forcing people out of their homes. The coalition have already proved they hate the sick and disabled but this is just.... cuntishness of the highest order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax

i'm literally quids above the threshold for housing benefit so this won't hit me personally but, like a lot of separated parents, i've got a 2 bedroomed house because the kids live with me for part of the week. people in my situation who are receiving housing benefit are either going to lose their homes or take a big cut in income.

we're all in this together.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/is-bedroom-tax-fair

x-post.

Is it clear what will happen if children live with you part of the week?

I support a few people in that situation and no one has been able to give a clear answer about whether this is going to be taken into consideration.

Seems a really nasty bit of policy.

It doesn't affect me either but this really is a truly nasty policy. How much more evil will they get if they do win the next election?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-bedroom-tax-is-just-the-latest-assault-on-our-poorest-citizens-8478898.html

Thousands of those hammered by the bedroom tax have nowhere to downsize to. According to the National Housing Federation, there are 180,000 English social tenants “under-occupying” two-bedroom homes, but fewer than 70,000 one-bedroom available social homes. According to Hilary Burkitt at Affinity Sutton, one of the largest housing associations, there are very few one-bedroom properties at all in regions like the North West and North East. Tenants could be driven into the higher rents of the private sector, of course, but then would need even higher levels of housing benefit. Research for housing associations shows 42 per cent of those affected already struggle financially. The rise in homelessness that will result won’t just be devastating for those involved, it will cost: last year, the number of homeless families living in B&Bs soared by nearly half.

What is so cruel about this policy is that it aims deliberately to drive poor people further into hardship. Sounds like hyperbole? It only works by inflicting such intolerable financial pain that families will be forced to leave their homes. It’s not just the bedroom tax they will face, either. April will be the most savage month since the Lib Dems decided to prop up the Tories: these households will be further battered by cuts to council tax benefit, disability benefits, housing benefit, and a cap on in-work and out-of-work benefits. It will be one of the greatest raids on Britain’s poor in modern times.

For the Government to get away with inflicting such misery, it needs the victims to be demonised as state-dependent leeches, scrounging from taxpayers. How some commentators howled about the abandoned mansion tax, allegedly imposing hardship on those without savings. All too many are silent about a policy which will cause far more suffering on the genuinely poor.

So let’s be clear about who is affected. Nearly two thirds are sick or disabled. People with box rooms; disabled people with specially adapted rooms or who need carers to stay over occasionally; the recently bereaved; parents of soldiers; those with broken marriages who need a room for their kids to stay: all face being kicked. Like Wayne Blackburn, a disabled man in Nelson, Lancashire, who needs a wheelchair to get around: “financially, April will cripple my wife and I,” he says. Like Zoe Edwards in Wandsworth, scraping by on a £7 an hour zero-hours contract after her son left home. I’m bombarded by other horrifying stories: a best friend’s father in the late stages of cancer, expected to leave his home; a man who cared for his sick mum, expected to leave now she is dead; a mother who needs a spare room as a foster carer, and so on.

I support a few people in that situation and no one has been able to give a clear answer about whether this is going to be taken into consideration.

my understanding is that in most circumstances children are designated as living with 1 of their parents, the other parent will not be entitled to the 2 bedroom rate. i'm not sure if there's a loophole for certain kinds of joint custody arrangement. i doubt it.

the possibility of people being forced to move into private accommodation and then receiving more housing benefit is brain boggling but i'm sure the whole thing will aggregate out as a spending cut so who cares where the money goes eh?

Have Labour said they will repeal this if they win? I thought much more would be made of this.

Labour are too busy trying to organise a brew-up in a pissery.

Blah blah blah won't commit to policy now blah blah something about credibility. They're barely even an opposition at this point.

^^^ this - when the government is doing really nasty evil fucking shit, something that any opposition worth it's salt should be able to get it's teeth into

from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21321113

How many bedrooms are you allowed?

The new rules allow one bedroom for each adult or couple. Children under the age of 16 are expected to share, if they are the same gender. Those under 10 are expected to share whatever their gender.

Disabled tenants will be allowed a bedroom for full-time carers. The number of bedrooms in the property will be determined by the landlord's tenancy agreement, so you cannot claim a bedroom is actually a living room.

Can I keep a spare bedroom?

Not without losing benefit. Parents who are separated are not allowed to keep a vacant bedroom for a child who visits. Foster children are not counted as permanent members of a household.

meanwhile, 600 jobs to go from Hull City Council as the reductions in central government grants to local authorities kick in. god knows what this will cost in jobs nationwide, i dread to think how people in already deprived areas like Westminster are gonna manage

labours response to the bedroom tax http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21490546

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bedroom-tax-420000-disabled-people-1721706

"We're not using the housing we have in this country in a proper way."

The Conservative Party chairman concluded: "What we can't continue to do, and we can't afford to do, is pay for a million empty rooms whilst we've got a waiting list that doubled under the previous administration and with so many people in desperate need of a house at all."

don't suppose anybody knows how many empty bedrooms there are in Buckingham Palace in any one week?

"lots of people will face hardship when they should be getting support"

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VDOPakfa0RY/UFbMSjTptfI/AAAAAAAAVj4/a5bw2fXbFvY/s1600/justice25.gif

btw does anybody have any clues why there's so much less social housing stock now than there was in, say, 1978?

hmmm a tough one. Could it be some crazy evil cow sold it all off cheap and didn't use the money to build more and instead gave tax cuts to the rich?

isaachayes.jpg
"Could it be some crazy evil cow
sold it all off cheap
and didn't use the money to build more and instead gave tax cuts to the rich?
Shaft (the poor)!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDnk-utm86U

Osborne's face getting fucking melted off his skull in an extinction event = Yeah we are finally in this together now.

hah

Anyone on ILX affected by these changes?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21981163

So this comes in monday? Most people are gonna lose out as there is no smaller houses to move to. It's truly disgusting and I am surprised there's not been a reaction like with the poll tax that hit Scotland 1989/Rest of UK 1990.

The Sun and the Mail etc are unsurprisingly backing it.

the thing is that the Poll Tax affected almost everybody whereas the Bedroom Tax will only affect workshy scroungers and nobody loves them

tory propaganda has done a good job there sadly

it's gone beyond that stage dude, feels like a public truism at this point in time

I know. The UK goverment are leading the way in hating (and bringing hate) on the sick,disabled and the poor. Even Maggie Thatcher could only dream of doing this.

To think most of Scotland wants to remain part of a country that does this :(

Sad thing is Labour no would do the exact same. Fuck them.

yeah exactly, Labour front-benchers contribute to the same awful rhetoric, wasn't it Brown who coined that "hard-working families" bullshit?

yeah probably. Or Frank the Wank Field (even he thinks the bedroom tax is unfair and hes another of the thatcherite scum who rose to the top of the labour party).

Scottish Labour (under orders from London no doubt) are doing the exact same. Lamont was the first to suggest universal benefits should maybe go. English owned "Scottish" tabloids loved it.

I despair.

The Labour Party up here weren't that far removed from the SNP (SNP being a bit more to the left under Salmond/Sturgeon) but the Blairites won and they moved more to the centre. But now they decided they want to have less common ground so are turning into the tories. They dont give a shit about the sick & disabled now either.

10 years ago the tory rhetoric was anti-immigrant and they got humped at the ballot box. Now all the mainstream westminster parties employ it. Just waiting for them all to say "the bedroom tax is all really jolly after all"

that's partly a response to the SNP and the independence ballot tho right? once the ballot's done either way things might change, and if you get independence i get the impression nobody's got a clue whether you'll be able to afford universal benefits or not?

sorry that was an xp re Scottish Labour

probably not. So we're all fucked in this country either way

Barely 1000 people turned out today in London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBlMrGgpwXE

According to Field they will ultimately end up with a bigger housing benefit bill.

"The housing benefit bill will go up because rent levels you can go up to in the private sector are larger than in the public sector."

Ah so it is a long term social engineering project, know yr place i.e. the fucking streets or some dystopian hooverville if you ain't HardworkingBritain. I'd love it if someone whacked one of these cunts. Problem is there are too many of them

Go lean on Shell's answer man.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/30/bedroom-tax-disaster-housing-chief

ffs
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2301735/I-bogus-disabled--DO-better-Ex-TV-host-new-Work-Minister-UKs-THREE-MILLION-claiming-disability-benefit.html

one of my parents neighbours has had to move due to this tax change ..

If anyone on here is affected by this, it's worth requesting a discretionary payment to cover the difference - this might cover some health issues and also apply if you can demonstrate that you are trying to find a smaller place.