Home >> Customer care >> News from Nottingham City Homes >> News feed >> Nottingham council tenants call for rethink on welfare changes (NCH release)

Nottingham council tenants call for rethink on welfare changes (NCH release)

Nottingham council tenants are backing Welfare Action Week by calling on ministers to rethink changes to housing benefit rules that could push many local people into hardship.

Welfare Action Week, which started on Monday, was organised by the National Housing Federation (NHF), to raise awareness of the harsh reality of the Government's proposed welfare changes.

Under the Welfare Reform Bill, which is going through Parliament, the Government is proposing to cut benefit for social housing tenants deemed to have a 'spare bedroom' – even if they have lived in the property for decades.

According to the NHF an estimated 670,000 people living in social housing who are of working-age and claim Housing Benefit will receive an average cut of £676 per year.

Separately, the Government wants to scrap tenants' right to have their housing benefit paid directly to their landlord – removing the most convenient and reliable way to pay their rent.

The Government is also proposing to introduce a cap on the overall amount of benefit that people can claim.

The policies are expected to be introduced in April 2013.

As a first step Nottingham City Homes' Tenant and Leaseholder Congress (TLC) is meeting with local MP, Chris Leslie, to ask for his support and request he lobbies against these measures in Parliament.

The Chair of the TLC, Jean England, will also be writing to the Welfare Reform Minister, Lord Freud, calling on him to drop these changes.

Jean England, Chair of the Tenant and Leaseholder Congress, said:

If we are charged for the extra bedrooms, it will force us out of our homes and into other accommodation, which could be half way across the city. Why should we have to move away from the area we know? We know our doctors in the locality, we know where our hospitals, schools and shops are, and our family and friends are all within spitting distance.

This is not the way to build sustainable communities. The communities we know will be lost. This is much more than a civil servant putting numbers down on a page, this is real people and real communities.

(Mon 17th October 2011 09:00:00 GMT)

Read all the latest news from Nottingham City Homes