Nothing has been so misrepresented as the so called “bedroom tax”.
It’s not a tax but a reduction in housing benefit for under occupancy. Housing benefit pays the rent and the taxpayer pays the benefit. Why the taxpayer should subsidise a tenant to live in social housing larger than the tenant needs requires some justification.
The idea behind reducing housing benefit for those renting properties too large for their needs was to persuade them to downsize and free up homes for families on the council waiting list. In short, to discourage house blocking.
Tales have been told of aged couples being forced out of family homes they have lived in for years. Tales totally untrue because the reduction does not apply to long term tenants.
The truth is that over 200 tenants in Sandwell have chosen to downsize making their formerly under occupied properties available to families, often coming from desperately overcrowded conditions.
What’s not well known, perhaps, concealed by opponents of this policy, is that the council has been given a fund from which it can award Discretionary Housing Benefit should unfairness result from a reduction in housing benefit.
For large numbers of disabled people, many of whom may have had their homes adapted to assist them to cope with their disability, application of a strict housing benefit reduction, without compensation from the Discretionary Housing Benefit fund is uncaring and inappropriate. Common sense and simple humanity argue that they should receive Discretionary Housing Benefit.
Yet it was precisely this uncaring, inhumane and idiotic approach which was adopted by Sandwell Council, when it tried to deduct disability living allowances from payments of DHB.
Thankfully, a disabled Oldbury man challenged Sandwell’s policy in the courts. Sandwell refused to back down in the face of this challenge. So there was a hearing which resulted in the judge branding Sandwell’s policy unreasonable and unlawful. The outlay for this exercise in mean minded disregard of obvious need was in the tens of thousands of pounds in court costs.
Following that decision, Cllr. Eling, Sandwell’s Labour finance chief, blamed the council’s lawyers for bad advice and asserted that he had always been on the side of the disabled claimant.
Spinning like a top.