Square foot size of room for bedroom tax

Confuseddot

Big_is_beautiful wrote: »

They can't have it all ways though, my local council have told an acquaintance of mine that she can take a lodger in to help with the extra charge.
She considered this, and a member of the council paid her a visit to offer advice on how to go about it and the legalities involved. Apart from losing some of her benefit because the rent would be classed as an extra income.
The worst thing was that the room was too small to let as a bedroom. Double standards????

Two useful sites, also when UC comes in then all income from lodger is disreagred but first 20 I think.

http://www.housing.org.uk/policy/welfare_reform/‘under-occupation’_penalty.aspx

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/local-authority-staff/housing-benefit/user-communications/publicity-materials/rent-shortfall/

mysterywoman10

Welshdresser wrote: »

The legislation refers to statutory overcrowding and is used to assess housing applications, but unfortunately it has no relevance to the new underoccupation legislation.
My housing association is sticking to the line of 'whatever is on the tenancy agreement' If you accepted a tenancy of a 3 bed house and have used the smallest room as a bedroom and you can get a bed in it, then it's a bedroom. I've been fielding calls for weeks from tenants wanting to get their properties re-classified and getting abuse and grief from them but they forget that it is not the landlord imposing these changes, i'ts the government.
There are hundreds of situations and reasons why it's unfair but the landlords have no control. We can only offer advice around benefits and budgeting and try to help people to downsize but it's a huge task.
Many of our properties are new build pattern book houses with the accepted room sizes to get partial grants from the government towards the build cost, these homes simply cannot be reclassified without disrupting the income stream and long term financial viability of the association or ultimately driving up the rent of the smaller properties so the re-classification would have no benefit anyway.
I'm sure there will be many legal challenges against the legislation over the coming months which may give cause to exempt more and more vulnerable people, but at the end of the day tenants need to be directing their anger towards their MP's about this and not the people on the front line who can't change anything.

I agree no anger absolutely should be directed against those on the front line, sadly though this will happen and agree about writing to MP's.

People still have the right of appeal (although I don't think the room size will be one of these) and if this puts a strain on the front line because of poor government policy they also need to be taking this up with their Unions as well, which I am sure they are doing.

Whether one agrees with a policy or not it is a bit pointless trying to implement one if you don't have the resources to do it.

The Unions need to support the workers in their increasing workloads and lack of staffing to implement ill thought out policies which LA's are taking all the flack for.

pipkin71

If the legislation refers to overcrowding, but the room is considered to be superfluous, I can't see that legislation to be of any use.