Oct 162013
 

We learned yesterday that the bedroom tax may not save as much money as the public were told. In fact it seems that savings were likely to be £160m less than the official projections of £480m for the first year, according to real data collected by four housing associations since April through a model used in 2012 by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to assess the likely impact of the policy.

But we are missing the real story here. What the report written by Professor Rebecca Tunstall at the University of York’s Centre for Housing Policy tells us is that the projected savings were only possible if none of the affected 660,000 households responded to the policy by moving to a smaller home https://www.york.ac.uk/media/chp/documents/2013/Testing%20DWP%20Assessment%20of%20Impact%20of%20SRS%20Size%20Criterion%20on%20HB%20Costs%20University%20of%20York.pdf.

In other words, the bedroom tax was only going to be cost-effective and produce savings if none of the affected households moved. Why did the government make the assumption that nobody would move? Because it knew that there were not enough 1 and 2 bedroom houses to move into.

But let’s look at the implications of this assumption:

·         The government knew there was a shortage of one and two bedroom houses

·         The government knew that most affected households included a disabled person

·         The government knew that people would fall into arrears or cough up their £14 per bedroom because they had no choice

·         And the government knew that when it talked about fairness and overcrowding it was being disingenuous.

The bedroom tax had nothing to do with fairness as claimed, because the government knew the policy would hurt the poorest and those least able to defend themselves, nor did it have anything to do with helping overcrowded families move into bigger houses, because the government assumed that was never going to happen.

This has to be the most ruthless, manipulative, callous and mendacious government of all time.  

[suffusion-the-author]

[suffusion-the-author display='description']

  6 Responses to “Bedroom Tax: The policy which could only succeed if it failed -Anita Bellows”

  1. It was only a matter of time.

    “Bloomberg News — Americans Sell Body Parts For Income”

    https://paulcraigroberts.org/2013/10/18/bloomberg-news-americans-sell-body-parts-income/

  2. “The average cost of renting a home privately across England and Wales has reached a record high of £757 a month, according to a survey.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24566849

  3. Does your site have a contact page? I’m having problems
    locating it but, I’d like to shoot you an email.
    I’ve got some recommendations for your blog you might be interested in hearing.
    Either way, great site and I look forward to seeing it develop over time.

  4. They must think that we are thick

  5. Strangely the 660k figure is around the same number affected by the last Labour Government,s brutality on the vulnerable Sheltered Housing residents in 2003, mendacious indeed both the Tories and the new “tougher than the Tories” Labour , shall we move on to social care and the rest to see how mendacious both truly are ?

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)