When the government introduced the bedroom tax a year ago, it justified the policy on the basis that it would encourage families to downsize to more “appropriately sized” accommodation. Critics responded by warning of the lack of one bedroom houses available. In England, for instance, there are 180,000 social tenants “under-occupying” two bedroom houses but just 85,000 one bedroom properties available. Unable to move, poor and vulnerable tenants would simply be hit by yet another welfare cut (housing benefit is reduced by 14 per cent for those deemed to have one “spare room” and by 25 per cent for those with two or more).
New research out today from the BBC vindicates these warnings. In the first year of the policy, just six per cent of social housing tenants affected have moved house, while 28 per cent have fallen into rent arrears for the first time. But while failing to achieve the behavioural change they wanted, ministers claim that the measure is saving £1m a day. As Prof Rebecca Tunstall, director of the centre for housing policy at the University of York, notes: “There were two major aims to this policy – one was to encourage people to move, and the other was to save money for the government in housing benefit payments. But those two aims are mutually exclusive. The government has achieved one to a greater extent and the other to a lesser extent.”
Content from our partners
