For all the benefit frothers out there

Jowo_2

lemonjelly wrote: »

I have to say this sounds absolutely bizarre to me. My experience (working in a HA, & having worked for a number of charities for quite some time) is quite different to the situation you describe. It almost sounds like the local courts have taken an issue for themselves, & are treating the council quite differently from all other LL's - something they really should not do. Further, if they had AST's, then there are mandatory grounds under which a court has to grant possession to the LL.

I have worked on behalf of tenants & LL's, & just find this siituation so strange! I'm suprised that the LA aren't challenging some of the courts decisions...

Yes, it was extremely unwelcome for my friend for Brighton and Hove council housing department to hand back their property both many months late and in a terrible condition.

Yes, they did completely mismanage the tenancy - repairs and tenant behaviour, breaching the terms of the lease and the promises made on their website.

Yes, they did fudge the notice and possession process. They had served an S21 on their tenant at the outset of their tenancy with them (AST) and then were in a position to apply for possession when the tenant refused to move out but they did not. It seems that they may not have even offer onward accommodation to their tenant until after the lease with the landlord had expired, further evidence of their poor administration of even the basics of the letting arrangement.

And yes, my understanding is that when an S21 is served, as long as it is served correctly, a judge cannot refuse to award a possession order. This was disputed by the council who insisted the local court took into account the Human Rights Act when possession is sought by a local authority (this isn't applicable to private landlords) when children are involved.

So perhaps the local council find that the local court suspends the PO.

Or perhaps the homelessness legislation/HRA legislation effectively cripples a council from evicting a tenant that they've been obliged to house.

Or perhaps the council wanted to head off bad PR from their chav/vulnerable tenant 'The council is making me or my poor toddler homeless and I don't even owe them a penny and they have showed me just one property to move into and it wasn't suitable and they aren't respecting me rights, wah'.

Or perhaps the council are aware that some tenants know their rights and know the only way they can get them to move out of temporary accommodation is either through bribing them with better accommodation because the tenant knows their eviction threats are toothless.

lemonjelly

Jowo wrote: »

Yes, it was extremely unwelcome for my friend for Brighton and Hove council housing department to hand back their property both many months late and in a terrible condition.

Yes, they did completely mismanage the tenancy - repairs and tenant behaviour, breaching the terms of the lease and the promises made on their website.

Yes, they did fudge the notice and possession process. They had served an S21 on their tenant at the outset of their tenancy with them (AST) and then were in a position to apply for possession when the tenant refused to move out but they did not. It seems that they may not have even offer onward accommodation to their tenant until after the lease with the landlord had expired, further evidence of their poor administration of even the basics of the letting arrangement.

And yes, my understanding is that when an S21 is served, as long as it is served correctly, a judge cannot refuse to award a possession order. This was disputed by the council who insisted the local court took into account the Human Rights Act when possession is sought by a local authority (this isn't applicable to private landlords) when children are involved.

So perhaps the local council find that the local court suspends the PO.

Or perhaps the homelessness legislation/HRA legislation effectively cripples a council from evicting a tenant that they've been obliged to house.

Or perhaps the council wanted to head off bad PR from their chav/vulnerable tenant 'The council is making me or my poor toddler homeless and I don't even owe them a penny and they have showed me just one property to move into and it wasn't suitable and they aren't respecting me rights, wah'.

Or perhaps the council are aware that some tenants know their rights and know the only way they can get them to move out of temporary accommodation is either through bribing them with better accommodation because the tenant knows their eviction threats are toothless.

A very interesting post.

The HRA affects public bodies. Effectively this means that HA's, as public bodies should be affected in exactly the same way.

However in my experience, where appropriate & the correct legal protocols have been followed, courts have evicted families with children.

The level of mismanagement is a scary story.

My feeling is that the para in bold is the most likely...

Entertainer

I haven’t read all the thread but someone was asking about the definition of poverty. It is defined as below 60% of average income. The problem with this definition is that the line goes up as average earnings increase- it is a moving target. Pre recession, average earnings were increasing at about 2% above inflation every year (they have been for 30 years), which is why the poverty figures didn’t move during Labour’s term in office and they missed all their targets despite doing some major redistributing through increased taxes and increasing benefits (e.g tax credits- which are a sanitised name for in work benefits). You can see a rise in the standard of living for poorer people but as many of them are defined as poor because average earnings have risen as well.

So what you are measuring is income inequality and not absolute poverty.

In America they measure absolute income poverty. They took a basket of goods in the 1970’s and then uprate it in line with inflation not earnings thus it is a measure of the actual number of people who are poor and goes down when the economy does well and increases when it does badly.

One of the drawbacks of a relative poverty definition is that it throws up some ludicrous situations whereby the average income can drop during a depression and less people are defined as poor even though everyone’s standard of living has fallen!!! This is exactly what happened in Eastern Europe in the early 90’s after the collapse of Communism- the economy slumped, everyone was worse off and yet less were defined as poor because average earnings fell faster.

If you use the relative definition (moving target remember), the only way you could get substantial people above the level would be to have a huge increase in benefits paid for by a huge increase in tax (you are talking 10p on the basic rate). The fact that politicians don’t tell you this, shows how inept/disingenuous/intellectually deficient they are in not spelling this out.

The problem is that I’m not sure the average taxpayer supports this- they don’t buy into the relative definition of poverty, they think of it more in absolute terms. And that was during the good times- now we have a colossal deficit to pay off so all the tax increases will be going towards that and as for benefit increases, this is very unlikely, we’ll be lucky to keep what we’ve got.

I wonder if they’ll be having the same discussion in 100 years when the average income is £100,000 in today’s money and anyone earning £60,000 in today’s money will be defined as poor?

silvercar

Out of curiosity I looked up what the LHA in my area would be. I'm on the fringes of London, so expected it to be relatively high. A 2 bed rate is £850 pcm, which is reasonable - for that you would get a 2 bed house in a safe but possibly rundown area. A 4 bed rate is £1600 pcm, for that you could get a 4 bed, 2 bathroom detached in a very, very nice area!

Entertainer

silvercar wrote: »

Out of curiosity I looked up what the LHA in my area would be. I'm on the fringes of London, so expected it to be relatively high. A 2 bed rate is £850 pcm, which is reasonable - for that you would get a 2 bed house in a safe but possibly rundown area. A 4 bed rate is £1600 pcm, for that you could get a 4 bed, 2 bathroom detached in a very, very nice area!

Wow, that seems very cheap for Greater London. Care to narrow it down any?

silvercar

Entertainer wrote: »

Wow, that seems very cheap for Greater London. Care to narrow it down any?

Technically just outside greater London, in Hertfordshire.

The two bed rate is reasonable, though it would get you a house rather than a flat. The 4 bed rate is unbelievable - £1200 would get you a suitable 4 bed house, why does the taxpayer need to fund another £400 a month?

Jowo_2

silvercar wrote: »

A 2 bed rate is £850 pcm, which is reasonable - for that you would get a 2 bed house in a safe but possibly rundown area. A 4 bed rate is £1600 pcm, for that you could get a 4 bed, 2 bathroom detached in a very, very nice area!

Pretty similar to when I ran a LHA direct search for the Hove 4 bedroom rate (£1400 pcm)and then looked on Rightmove - threw up the odd luxury detached house within that price bracket or the tenant could slum it with a more central property which would be smaller in size and have less garden...

this may explain why the LHA bill is expected to rocket to £20 billion - some households are renting property that the working age claimants could never afford to rent even if they were in full time employment.

In this case, the annual rent is £16,750. With council tax, energy bills, transport, food, insurance, tv/telecoms, etc, a household would probably have to earn around 45k to comfortably afford this standard of living without state intervention.

One adult would need to earn about 25k (twice the national wage) just to pay the rent and council tax and not have a penny left over. The other adult would need to earn close this just to food and clothe the kids, pay the other essential household bills.

So we've now got a situation where benefits entitle some households to a standard of living that they can't actually replicate in employment so we shouldn't be surprised when they don't try.

silvercar

I don't understand why the LHA doesn't fund a reasonable home rather than an extravagent one. The 2 bed rate for my area is reasonable in terms of purchase power, the 4 bed rate is just too high. I was also surprised by what family size you need to get the 4 bed rate, 3 kids with eldest 16 and younger two different sexes and middle one over 11 gets you a 4 bed.

princeofpounds

I don't understand why the LHA doesn't fund a reasonable home rather than an extravagent one. The 2 bed rate for my area is reasonable in terms of purchase power, the 4 bed rate is just too high. I was also surprised by what family size you need to get the 4 bed rate, 3 kids with eldest 16 and younger two different sexes and middle one over 11 gets you a 4 bed.

The process is quite mechanical apart from selecting the area to be assessed (and even that has lots of guidelines to aim for consistency).

So I suspect what is happening is that the median 4 bed is much nicer than the median studio flat relative to the rest of the category. There's probably an awful lot of dross in the bottom end but you don't see many 4 beds in slums.

silvercar

princeofpounds wrote: »

The process is quite mechanical apart from selecting the area to be assessed (and even that has lots of guidelines to aim for consistency).

So I suspect what is happening is that the median 4 bed is much nicer than the median studio flat relative to the rest of the category. There's probably an awful lot of dross in the bottom end but you don't see many 4 beds in slums.

Makes sense and rightmove confirms that.