Benefit fraud

Smartsaver7

robotrobo wrote: »

I dont need to follow anyone , this morning while out at the swimming baths, they park there cars in the b\badge parking spaces & then take their dogs on long walks, ive better things to do than follow anybody, & as far as haveing there details in view at the town hall !, the genuine people wouldnt have to worry who saw it, its not the genuine people thats the cheats of the system, your not supposedly be able to walk more than 30 mtrs or less, especially if you are on the higher rate of the mobility scheme, but believe me they do, a few have been caught and dealt with in our town , there needs to be a lot more investigators following these people , & make them aware that someone will eventually catch up with them.

Well if you are that bothered about it , do your public duty and report them to the council , you could even get some footage of them doing their walk of shame. Parking in a blue badge bay doesn't mean you have a badge.
I really am not sure how posting the names of people who have a blue badge on a notice board would help , as anyone who knows them probably knows they already have a blue badge and if they were taking the P those people would already have reported them or are you advocating people pop to their town hall and go blue badge spotting getting names and addresses and checking on up on them. I would imagine any council that did that would be in breach of the Data Protection Act and the HRA (right to privacy)

Most councils have days of action with the police and target people who misuse the badges and as I have said from knowing people who have had to renew badges , many are failing the process which changed in the last three or so years. Lastly lots misuse the badges as they have been issued for a disabled relative , so your golfers wife on daughter may be the holder of the badge.

Jim_Cooke

Lanzarote1938 wrote: »

I think the 'sacred cow' of anyone having a house/flat to themselves for those who don't pay for their housing is something to be considered.

There isn't one. Single people of working age with no children or serious health issues are lucky to get a room in an HMO these days.

dktreesea

Bogalot wrote: »

I would suggest you're not getting the full story here. Not only would such reasoning be discriminatory, thousands of working age women are granted mortgages with a partner and on their own. Lenders do not decline mortgages to women solely because they are of child bearing age.

Yes, I thought the reason they said the bank had given them was odd and discriminatory as well, and said so. I'm sure there will be an official reason that has nothing to do with the possibility of them starting a family at some future date. I doubt this would be, in our neck of the woods, if the bank thought the property market would crash. Not very likely. They've since approached a broker, who was telling them that 30% of mortgage applications are declined. There must be more to it, otherwise why would the bank suggest getting a guarantor? I wondered if it could have been because his partner is on a fixed term contract, so they were treating her like a contractor, even though a fixed term contract is not temping and she would automatically become a permanent member of staff after 4 years anyway.


I don't quite get though, why you all think a banker shouldn't consider, when assessing the risk factors for mortgage lending, the possibility that the couple in question could drop down to one income in the future, - for whatever reason, starting a family, redundancy, having an accident at work, even splitting up - especially if they thought the repayments would then become unaffordable?

NYM

Lenders will apply more rigorous stress tests to ensure borrowers will still be able to afford their repayments when interest rates rise. As lenders are being extremely cautious with their forecasts and assuming mortgage rates will have reached between 6pc and 7pc in five years’ time. This will require borrowers to have a considerable cushion in their disposable income to show they will be able to meet their repayments in the future.

It's not what your neighbours can afford today that matters, it's what they may have to be able to afford in the future.

sangie595

And I think it's really sensible that lenders are more rigorous in their stress testing, providing that is done within the law. Many, many, years ago, when I bought my first house, I had 100% mortgage and no cushion! My entire savings went just on the fees and moving costs etc. I was young and stupid, and had no idea what a risk I was taking. At 22 who would? Looking back now, I am horrified any lender would give a 22 year old, one year into their first job, with few savings, as much money as they did! As it happens it was a great move for me - it was before the first great house price hike and I more than doubled my money in six years. But that was luck and nothing more.

nmr1991

if i'm to get this job i really need, it says I can stay on the job for about 2 weeks and then contact universal credit, though i'm not getting any money in, im still claiming UC. this way I know if i'm able to keep the job and if I don't , im still on the uc regime but with a lengthy sanction it really doesn't matter, if im not getting money its not fraud.

borkid

dktreesea wrote: »

I don't quite get though, why you all think a banker shouldn't consider, when assessing the risk factors for mortgage lending, the possibility that the couple in question could drop down to one income in the future, - for whatever reason, starting a family, redundancy, having an accident at work, even splitting up - especially if they thought the repayments would then become unaffordable?

Because as people have said it is illegal, they can not discriminate on grounds of gender. They could if they wanted make the mortgage dependant on the couple taking insurance against redundancy/illness I suppose as they do sometimes with building insurance.

sangie595

borkid wrote: »

Because as people have said it is illegal, they can not discriminate on grounds of gender. They could if they wanted make the mortgage dependant on the couple taking insurance against redundancy/illness I suppose as they do sometimes with building insurance.

Pregnancy isn't redundancy or illness though. Insurers would not insure against pregnancy add it is considered a lifestyle choice. They could certainly insure against the other two, but not pregnancy. Not even health insurance covers pregnancy in normal situations, although they might cover complications arising from pregnancy.

Whilst it is true - and right - that insurers cannot discriminate against potential pregnancy, there has to be an element of personal responsibility here. If you have a mortgage, you know what it will cost you. If you intend to have children them you need to plan accordingly. And most people do. Mortgage defaults as a result of a person deciding to be a stay at home parent are not a significant factor in mortgage lending. It may contribute, for some people, to overextending their finances, but that is often a matter of poor choices and spending beyond their means in all sorts of areas of life. Yes, some people do get in an awful mess. But most don't.

dktreesea

borkid wrote: »

Because as people have said it is illegal, they can not discriminate on grounds of gender. They could if they wanted make the mortgage dependant on the couple taking insurance against redundancy/illness I suppose as they do sometimes with building insurance.

I don't see why including a risk of drop in income if the couple start a family is discriminating on gender. Yes, it may look like that if they take the smallest income away (and it happens to be the wife's) and see if the mortgage is still affordable, but who is to say who would be the stay at home parent if there was one, and if not, then presumably the bank would be right to consider the impact of childcare costs down the line.

dktreesea

sangie595 wrote: »

This is still not entirely true. Prefabricated housing in the post-war period was intended to have a short life, and was built to house large numbers of people who had been bombed out during the war. People forget that right through the late 40's and early 50's the UK was still very much suffering the effects of the war. Rationing, for example, did not stop until 1954. I recall passing, as a child, an estate of prefab housing built of corrugated iron (imaginatively nicknamed "tin town" by the locals), and far from being dire housing, they were beautiful - vibrant with colour and care. Housing is not just what it is - people make it. I happened to pass the estate a few years ago again, and was surprised to see it still there. And actually, now listed! And it is just as nice - they are considered desirable homes (although much improved on the original bare designs.

In a similar vein, many of the high and medium rise blocks that are derelict today were built in response to massive rates of slum clearance and were highly desirable properties that had huge waiting lists. And equally lovingly cared for by people who thought they had died and gone to heaven because they had indoor toilets and bathrooms. I am not exactly ancient, but as a child I lived in a house with no bathroom and no indoor toilet. My auntie never had an indoor toilet in her entire life, and she died in the 80's!

I do agree that, often thanks to corruption, some of the standards of building, were poor. But the decline of these properties was equally due to a shift in social attitudes wherein people came to care less for social housing (and themselves). When I was a child, there were unemployed people, but very few would have lived in the conditions that people now routinely accept and blame everyone else for! They may have been poor, but they had pride. A slovenly house or lifestyle is not a consequence of low income. I clearly recall that my mum would carefully parcel up some of my old clothes and toys and slip them to Ruth's mum at the school gate, because Ruth's dad was out of work. But I never saw Ruth or any of her family turned out in dirty clothes, and their house, demolished a decade later as a slum, was spotless.

Poverty does not equate with the sort of chaotic lifestyles and communities that we have today. And there are plenty of areas of social housing that are fantastic, including some of the new build properties. We once described slums as places where the housing was inadequate - and it really was. But nowadays, in this country, slums are what people make. Having travelled the world, and visited slums across it, I have seen better cared for slums than some of our council estates, and tidier homes too.

Maybe we mean different things by prefabricated. I certainly didn't mean trailer park style housing or corrugated iron prefab houses. The houses I am thinking of are prefabricated concrete houses, which were built after WWII and went quite a way to solving the housing shortage of the time. Some of these same houses now suffer from rising damp and concrete cancer.


I'm not a fan of houses that aren't built to last. In Edinburgh these kinds of estates are getting pulled down, but what is going up in their place is different (certainly a lot better built given the building code up here) to what is being pulled down in the sense that most of the replacement houses are being occupied by reasonably well paid people in key professions - nurses, teachers, firemen, tradespeople and the like. Meanwhile the poor and disenfranchised, the only ones presumably who were willing to live in the properties provided to their being pulled down, are being forced out of the city.