The government’s Welfare Reform Bill gained Royal Assent on 8 March, replacing most means-tested benefits with Universal Credit.
The National Housing Federation recently published a series of briefings which it will add to as further details emerge
For tenants, the Act will cap benefits which workless household can receive to £500 per week for couples and lone parents – and £350 per week for single people without children. It will also impact on around 670,000 working-age social tenants with spare bedrooms. For example, if a family has one spare room they will lose 14 per cent of their housing benefit. If they have two spare rooms the cut will be 25 per cent. This is likely to cause problems for tenants who are already struggling to pay their rent.
Another issue is that from October 2013, housing benefit will be paid directly to working-age tenants. The government will run
five ‘demonstration projects’ between June 2012 and June 2013 to assess the impact of this.
The Act introduces other significant changes to the benefits system:
- replaces Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payments
- uprates Local Housing Allowance rates by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – private tenants
- amends the forthcoming statutory child maintenance scheme
- limits the payment of contributory Employment and Support Allowance to a 12-month period
The Act can be downloaded from legislation.gov.uk.