Todays Bedroom Tax discussion at Breckland Council

Comments from Cllr Brenda Canham in relation to Bedroom Tax discussion at Breckland Council on 18.12.13

Mr Chairman, as somebody that has lived in social housing my whole life, and as somebody that has worked to improve the lives of tenants in social housing for over 20 years – this is an important subject for me and I am grateful that we have the opportunity to talk about this.

Forgive me if I refer to ‘bedroom tax’ – I’m aware that technically it’s ‘spare room subsidy’ but most people know it more commonly as the bedroom tax so I’ll stick to that.

Now, some of you may remember the old Breckland housing stock that was transferred? This was mainly made up of 3 bedroom houses. That was the need back then, but times have changed and the needs of people locally have changed. We have known this has been an issue for some time and there have been some efforts to address that this, but clearly not enough as the variety of properties available clearly does not match the need that exists. This was a fairly significant issue, but then came along the bedroom tax – this has made the situation desperate for so many people.

I can think of numerous people living on my ward that want to move to smaller properties but cannot. It is so unfair that the Government, or maybe the media, I’m not sure, has been painting those affected by this as people greedily hanging onto properties too large for them when actually, most people are incredibly grateful for the help they’ve been given and don’t even want a house of the size they have. The disabled person on Edinburgh Way stuck in a 3 bedroom house is a good example, a bungalow or ground floor flat would be most appropriate. The young girl with mental health conditions and her two young children on Ripon Way, in a 3 bedroom house, but applied for a 2 bedroom house, but told to accept the 3 bedroom or be taken off the housing list.

In Britain today, there are 310 new claimants for housing benefit every day. Housing prices are set to rise by 34% by 2020 and rents by 49%. Unemployment has risen by 24% from 2008 to 2013 – these factors, and many more have resulted in an increased demand for social housing.

I hope that members today can support my motion. As a Council, we need to be working in partnership with the housing suppliers. But we also need to prove to residents that we recognise that this is an issue. Most people I know affected by the bedroom tax think that the Council does not care and is not interested in their situation. We have the opportunity to send a message today that we do get it, and we are working to address it. 

Comments in relation to the ‘bedroom tax’ discussion at Breckland Council by Councillor Terry Jermy, Thursday 18^th December 2013

Mr Chairman, I’ve got a small confession to make. I was somebody that wasn’t particularly bothered about the ‘spare room subsidy’ at first. I didn’t quite see what the fuss was about. It wasn’t until I started to get a number of phone calls from people affected that I realised that something was seriously wrong with this policy.

One in particular I shall mention. There is a lady who lives near to me in a very modest two bedroom house. She is technically of ‘working age’ although I think she is close to retirement and I know that she struggles with her health and works as many hours as she can but finance is an issue. She’s the sort of person you would describe as in a 'poverty trap'. She earns £782 a month after tax and national insurance, £396 of this goes straight out in rent for the house. The bedroom tax being introduced took away a further chunk of what was already a limited amount of disposable income. Given her age and her vulnerability she didn’t particularly want to get a lodger for her ‘spare room’ which wasn’t really a spare room at all, it used to be her sons room who’s now grown up and moved away and it provided a space when he came to visit as he worked away a lot. But anyway, she got a lodger… praying on her vulnerability, he stole from her.

This woman’s story is not uncommon unfortunately, I could give numerous personal examples of people being hit by this bedroom tax, it is grossly unfair and really affecting some of the most vulnerable in the communities that we all represent.

I was genuinely surprised to see Breckland so high up on the list of places affected in the recent figures that were published. We have over 1,000 people losing on average around £800 a year. How can Breckland be more severely affected that Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft and nearly as many as Kings Lynn? This is a significant number of families being penalised. Given that probably 90% of the people that have come to me and have been affected by this have stated that they actually want to move or downsize, this leaves me to believe that it is because of our shortage as a district of one and two bedroom properties and bungalows that there is such an issue. This places a significant responsibility on us as a Council to do something about this as we cannot allow the suffering to continue that has been caused by this policy. So I would urge you to support this motion as one small step towards addressing the situation that exists.