Families face eviction as ministers plunge into seventeen billion let bill

Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor & , : {}

Ministers are to crack down on extreme housing good payments in a array of reforms written to quell the augmenting �17 billion annual let bill.

Yvette Cooper, the Work and Pensions Secretary, plans to tip the tip rates paid to in isolation landlords as majority as �1,800 a week to stop family groups on good vital in magnificent homes at the taxpayers expense, The Times has learnt.

The reforms, to be voiced in the run up to subsequent months Budget, are approaching to save hundreds of millions of pounds a year, but could outcome in hundreds of family groups being evicted from costly place to live with 6 months notice.

The move is a reply to a flourishing series of cases, quite in London and alternative cities, where internal councils have been forced to compensate in isolation rents for family groups in five-bedroom mansions value some-more than �1 million since of the necessity of befitting legislature housing.

Related LinksFamily receives jot down �279,000 housing benefitHigh housing good rates pulling up rent

The housing good bill, that covers rents in the in isolation and amicable sector, has jumped from �11 billion in 1998 to �17.4 billion in 2008-09 and goes to 4.5 million claimants. The Treasury has foresee that this will climb to �20 billion by 2011 since of the recession, rising in isolation rents and a vicious necessity of amicable housing. The normal rent in amicable housing is usually �72 a week opposite �108 in the in isolation sector.

Roughly 100 family groups are right away reception some-more than �1,000 a week in rent up to a extent of �1,800. But the complaint is flourishing opposite the nation as landlords take value of inexhaustible good limits. Thousands of households are reception payments of �500 a week or �26,000 a year to live in homes over the reach of majority operative families.

Councils have to residence any one who has been without a country for 6 months, but they additionally have to compensate housing good for any one already reception such payments who moves from a opposite area. In these cases the family can move in to any residence and the legislature is thankful to cover the payment.

Last week it emerged that Essma Marjam, a singular mom with 6 children, had changed in to a �2 million residence in Maida Vale, costing the taxpayer �1,600 a week in rent.

Ms Cooper has right away motionless to bar the tip 5-10 per cent of in isolation rents when creation housing good calculations. This could possibly be finished nationally, penalising London properties most, or regionally, that would save some-more money.

Helen Goodman, the Benefits Minister, told The Times yesterday that a informal intrigue could save hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

The tip rents could come down by some-more than �1,000 a month and normal rents could tumble by at slightest �100 a month underneath the new calculations.

Ms Goodman certified that the new tip could outcome in evictions but hoped these would be minimal. The arching housing good check is mostly due to a vicious necessity of amicable housing that has led to a larger faith on in isolation zone homes. The Government probably stopped construction amicable housing in the late 1990s and the retrogression is preventing Gordon Brown from creation majority swell on his aspiration to set up 3 million homes by 2020, together with scarcely one million amicable houses.

Recent total from the National Housing Federation likely that usually 45,000 amicable homes would be built in 2009/10.

High rents were initial addressed in 2008 when the Government introduced a regulation for working out extent payments. Under the new complement of internal housing allowances the Valuation Office Agency links extent good rates with weekly normal in isolation rents for different-sized homes in over a hundred zones.

James Purnell, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, put a an additional adhering smear on the complaint in Oct 2008 when he put a 5-bed extent on housing good claims. The target was to stop bigger family groups with 6 or 7 young kids vital in mortar mansions. That unsuccessful too.