Tag Archives: ukcuts

Bedroom tax: families trapped with nowhere to move

August 5, 2013   Carers, ukcuts

Revealed: ‘Big lie’ behind the bedroom tax as families trapped with nowhere to move so cannot avoid new penalty for having spare room

Emily Dugan Author Biography

Social Affairs Correspondent

Monday 05 August 2013

96% of benefit claimants who will be penalised cannot be rehoused

The Government’s justification for its controversial “bedroom tax” has been debunked by new figures showing that up to 96 per cent of those affected have, in effect, nowhere to move.

The figures published today in The Independent expose the false argument behind ministerial attempts to spin the move as ending the  “spare-room subsidy”, and confirm campaigners’ claims that it merely penalises poor people.

The policy means that tenants have their housing benefit reduced by 14 per cent if they have one spare bedroom, and 25 per cent if they have two or more spare bedrooms.

Yet more than 19 out of 20 families  hit by the bedroom tax are trapped in their larger homes because there is nowhere smaller within the local social housing stock to take them. This is shown by figures provided by councils in response to Freedom of Information requests by the Labour Party.

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Bedroom tax’ has sent 400 Norwich people into rent arrears, claim council leaders

August 2, 2013   Carers, health, mental health, Norfolk, ukcuts

Households are finding it very difficult to bridge the gap

Friday, August 2, 2013
7:30 AM

More than 400 people in Norwich have fallen into rent arrears since the introduction of the so-called “bedroom tax”, city council leaders say.

The controversial changes to cut housing benefit payments, dubbed the “bedroom tax” by Labour, came into force in April.

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Council spent £40,000 making home fit for disabled daughter.. now they say it’s too big

August 1, 2013   Carers, ukcuts

Lisa faced a terrible choice – somehow find the money or move to a smaller bungalow without any specially adapted equipment

Andy Stenning Daily Mirror

Lisa Evans is the human cost of a policy dreamed up far away by people who have never known hardship.

Life is a battle, a struggle against the odds.

But, hard as it is, just one smile from her severely disabled daughter Vicki makes it all worthwhile.

From the crack of dawn until midnight she works to care for her daughter.

The single mother-of-two has looked after Vicki, 26, since an operation left her a spastic quadriplegic at just six months old.

But the hated Bedroom Tax has destroyed her delicate financial and emotional balancing act.

Since April, Lisa, 48, has been paying £35 a week more in council rent and it has pushed her to the point of physical and emotional collapse.

She faced a terrible choice – either find the money or move to a smaller bungalow without any of the specially adapted equipment Vicki needs.

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