Social housing tenants are unable to move to smaller properties – despite being taxed for staying.
The Bedroom Tax is the government’s removal of the ‘spare room subsidy’ in the housing benefit rules. But families in Central Beds have nowhere to go.
According to a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Labour party, in Central Beds 1,548 households are affected by the Bedroom Tax but there are only 31 unoccupied one and two bedroom council properties available to move to.
Aragon Housing Association , which provides most of the social housing in this area, is aware of the problem.
Aragon’s Dave Lakin, head of new business and development, said: “Our building plans focus on developing more smaller one and two bedroom properties. But sadly this will not satisfy the huge demand for smaller homes which has become more acute in the wake of the government’s under-occupancy charge.”
Three quarters of Aragon’s new properties will have one or two bedrooms but these could take years to go through the planning process. Aragon is supporting the National Housing Federation’s Yes to Homes campaign at www.yestohomes.co.uk
A spokesman for Central Beds Council said: “In the run up to the launch of this new legislation we wrote to all affected Central Bedfordshire residents to inform them of the changes.
“Many tenants we contacted told us that were not concerned by the resulting reduction in housing benefit but we are aware of a number who would like to move but cannot at present, due to the lack of smaller accommodation.
“As a council we currently offer incentives and assistance to tenants who want to downsize and they are given priority within our housing allocations policy.
“In terms of building new homes in the future, our focus traditionally has been on providing family homes but it is also our intention to promote developments which cater for smaller households too.”