Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Benefit cap to begin in Haringey in April
The Department for Work and Pensions today confirmed the four London local authorities where the Benefit Cap roll out will start in April. It will be introduced in Bromley, Croydon, Enfield and Haringey and rolled out across the country throughout the summer.
The cap will be in place across the whole country by summer 2013.
The Benefit Cap will see the amount people can receive in benefits capped at the average earned income after tax and National Insurance for working households of £500 a week for couple and single parent households – the equivalent of £26,000 per year.
It will apply to the combined income from JSA, Income Support, Employment and Support Allowance, Child Benefit, Child Tax Credits and other benefits.
Certain households including those with someone in receipt of Disability Living Allowance or the Support Component of ESA and war widows and widowers will be exempt. To increase the incentive for people on out-of-work benefits to find work, households with a member who is entitled to Working Tax Credit will also be exempt from the benefit cap
The Department for Work and Pension’s has allocated £100 million in Discretionary Housing Payments to help support vulnerable people affected by this change.
For a useful guide to how the cap will work, see this factsheet from Disability Rights
Tags for Forum Posts: benefits cap
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Seema Chandwani on
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William?
- Did you not hear IDS this morning?
- Have you not heard Camerons New Years "speech"?
Please, stop trying to convince yourself.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Well Billy, I'd be largely in agreement that the current system is in need of reform as it is complicated and unwieldy.
However, the reforms are driven by ideology rather than common sense and take no account of the effects of 30 years of housing policy by successive governments that ensure that demand outstrips supply and effectively washes its hands of the need for lower rents and higher standards of house maintenance by landlords.
They also rely on false narratives and the 'everyone knows anecdotage' about generations of worklessness now debunked by research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the prevelance of large families sucking up benefits actually a tiny fraction of households and the idea that joblessness is a lifestyle choice, fuelled by alcohol and Sky TV which seems a particular obsession with some MPs who seem to think Shameless was a documentary not an OTT comedy.
I think the main winners in the wake of these reforms will be the payday loan sharks currently circling the poorer parts of Haringey and to whom people will turn when they can't afford an electricity bill, school uniform or food after their rent and council tax ( which many poorer households will have to pay for the first time) have gone out and the utility bills fall due.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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" . . . yet according to the Rowntree research no-one is claiming huge benefits at the other end."
Mr Hoyle, can you give a specific reference to this research, please. Plainly, this is an interesting piece of evidence, which I'd like to look up and read.
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Many thanks, Liz. I promise to read the whole report through with care. However, we're a teensy bit busy over the next couple of days. So I'd still appreciate Will Hoyle's help in going to the sections/paragraphs where the Rowntree researchers show that "no one is claiming huge benefits at the other end".
I'd assumed that this cast doubt on the view that either landlords - or perhaps a significant number of claimants - were huge beneficiaries of the system. But I'd prefer to read the research rather than make guesses.
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No Billy, the HB rises because large numbers of people are now having to claim because of high rents and lack of choice, not because of a few people getting a lot. Working people are now just as likely to be receiving HB as someone on a means-tested benefit. Claims for it are shooting up because of lack of rent controls and stagnating wages which are not matching the rises in housing, utility, food and transport costs.
Whether landlords respond to this cap by lowering rents remains to be seen. I'm not hopeful that this will be the case but we shall see
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I wondered when we'd get around to The Market. There is a fiction that market force, if left alone, will result in some kind of equitable situation. That might be true where you have a choice. I can buy branded baked beans or cheaper unbranded ones. That's because I have a choice. In housing there is little choice. If the supply of social housing was such that I could choose whether to go for private or public sector housing, the rents would probably be similar. But when you have little or no choice (as in London) a landlord can charge more or less what they like because I need a roof over my head. Rather than regulate the amount of housing benefit, would it not be more equitable to regulate rents?
Also, it's rather disingenuous to blame on the lack of social housing on section 106 agreements not being made to ensure their supply when the government is proposing a massive watering down of these agreements.
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The timing of this announcement, Thursday afternoon leaving just over a working day before Xmas shows you how nasty this Government is.
The people affected by this are not just the jobless, but people on a variety of benefits including those on: Carers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, Child Tax Credits, Widowed Parent Allowance and Maternity Allowance. Around 70% of people who claim Housing Benefit actually work
The jobs that we take for granted, the people cleaning our streets, looking after our children, serving us in coffee shops or driving around sick paitents to medical appointments do not pay well in comparison to the cost of living and in order for them to survive benefits/subsidies have been created.
A lot of people who currently claim benefits actually paid into the system through national insurance.
The cost of housing in Tottenham is one of the lowest in London, however a 3 bedroom property is still warranting about £20-£22k a year. The thought that people on Housing Benefits are getting a £26k cheque through the door is disingenious, £20-£22k of it is going direct to landlords often offering below standard properties for people to live in.
I find it incredious that any Tory can come on this site blaming a Labour run council for selling off social housing, the Right to Buy scheme caused the mass sell off of housing stock creating a mass market for the private sector to offer private rental as an alternative.
Why is the rents so high? Because it can be, this crazy RTB policy eliminated competition enabling private landlords to increase rents knowing that local authorities had very little choice but to use them in order to fulfil its statutory duty to house the vulnerable. Ironically the biggest benefit scroungers are the rich Landlords, who probably reside in a 5 bed semi somewhere in Essex paid for on the proceeds of housing benefit - our money.
Instead of the government realising its mistake with RTB, it has decided to increase the discount to those wishing to purchase from £16,000 to a staggering £75,000 off. Its mass marketing campaign a few months ago will see more homes leaving the council.
I find it sick that we are attacking these benefits, but ignore the billions that multinational companies dont pay in tax. That we can insult a widowed parent or a carer of a mentally ill child for having financial subsidies, but are silent when the likes of Richard Branson recieve millions in government subsidies to run a railway company, charging the highest fares in Europe yet still making enough to pay shareholders hundreds of millions of pounds in dividends - who is the scrounger now?
If the Tories are so concerned about not artificially engineering markets, do so as a blanket policy. Dont award rail contracts, sell those contracts as a going concern and re-coup the billions of pounds of public money spent to build the railway structure and stop subsidising rich millionaires with money that could go to the dsabled. Truth is Branson wouldnt buy it if he had to pay for it and actually generate real term growth. This stupid Thatcherite idea to privatise as a form of saving the public purse was a lie and it is time to renationalise it, and either reduce the fare not to form profit or invest the profits back into building infrastructure in this country and creating jobs, not building some shareholders wine cellar or feeding some off shore tax haven in Jersey.
Why do the Tories artificially engineer bus fares, we have an inflation rate - stick to it. I paid 80p to get on a Bus not in Mumbai, but Manchester, the fact its £2:35p in London and Boris is raising this in 2 weeks when many are finding it hard to financially survive is disgusting.
How any Tory can come on a forum, not even know the cost of rent on his own doorstep and claim they are in touch with reality is a joke! As for discussing Labours role in the economy.
- Exactly how much has Osbourne borrowed in the last 2.5yrs? What? ... More? Noooo!
- How much growth has there been?... What? None? Nooo!
- How many shops have disappeared on the high street in the past 2.5yrs?
- Where are these private sector jobs? Ah... India!
- When will Austerity end? 2014? 2015? Now... its 2017?
This is nothing more than ideologically driven hatred of the working poor, a social cleansing of our community and only the seriously stupid would attack poor people in their own area, the Leader of this country must be laughing at you as he sips his wine in a kitchen he scrounged £680,000 of public money doing up!
Pleaseeee check yourself, pityful!
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Permalink Reply by maggie on
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When Thatcher sold off council housing the long term fall out was very predictable; fragmenting and privitising the NHS will also have dire predictable consequences, and capping benefits will cause real hardship. These services and support systems were put in place because they were needed and they still are. Leaving it to market forces so that landlords or private health companies can suck out as much profit as they can has never worked and will never work. In the meantime ordinary people will suffer. As a start we need to bring in a fair rent policy.
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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This Maggie, is the main reason for high rental prices in the private sector amongst benefits claimants. If the demand was soaked up with enough LA owned social housing stock that didn't demand daft rental tariffs we wouldn't be in this situation. Thatcher was the catalyst but unfortunately Labour took the batten and did nothing to address this. If this is to be addressed in the next twenty years, whatever government, they need to build thousands of state owned houses and flats, so the priority is housing for the needy and not the back pocket of the landlord.
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Signed.
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loool Little Willy, you are too predictable... start a debate and when you realise you dont have a clue what you are on about, out comes the "I am too busy to know anything, unlike you... blah blah blah!" lines
For someone so convinced he is non-political, but was/is the Treasurer for the Tottenham Tories is about as silly as giving the countries Chancellors job to a plonker with a History degree.... LOOOOOOOOOL, Oh hang on!
Have a nice New Years Billy.... & in 2013 try not to keep calling yourself ignorant, thats my job!
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