Benefits warning over spare rooms

WORKING-AGE residents living in a council or a housing association home with a spare bedroom will lose part of their housing benefit, according to an Oldham-based landlord.

Aksa Homes are campaigning against the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill — which could see disabled people, foster carers, working families on low income and those with young children, all affected by proposed changes.

Tenants who under-occupy their homes could see benefit cuts averaging £14 per week unless they move to a smaller property.

Housing benefits is one of a number of benefits, including Jobseekers allowance and tax credits — that will be rolled into one monthly payment from 2013, known as Universal Credit.

Government also plans for all households to have their benefits capped and scrap tenants’ right to have their housing benefit paid directly to their landlord.

Ministers believe that by paying the benefit directly to tenants it will breed responsibility and will also make it easier for claimants to move into work, removing the complication of having to cancel different benefits from different agencies.

Aksa Homes believes the changes are ultimately pushing tenants into more hardship.

The social housing landlords are urging residents to sign a petition currently stationed at its town centre headquarters in Phoenix Street to fight the reforms. Guinness Northern Counties, which runs 1,102 properties in Oldham, has joined Aksa Homes and other local housing associations in voicing its concerns to the proposed changes.

Mushtaq Khan, director of Aksa Homes said: “We want to urge the Government to reconsider its proposal and we need as many tenants as possible to sign the petition, or contact their MP, to help to do this.

“We don’t want tenants to be forced into poverty.”

Concerned tenants can alternatively email their MP at www.housing.org.uk/campaigns/housing_crisis