A thought has occurred to me. It’s an unusual occurrence so it’s a pretty lonely thought and I reckoned I would share it with you all.
The new subsidy arrangements for self contained Temporary Accommodation (TA) are tied to LHA rates for the size of the property, not the size of the household. All well and good so far; I understand it, even if I’m not happy with it. In my authority, that is going to mean the TA guys in Housing are somehow going to have to tell us how big the property is. Okay, the “somehow” we will sort out with our housing colleagues.
But, therein lies my thought. Housing pop along to Mr Landlord and say, “Hello, Mr Landlord. We would love to lease your 2 bed property for our scheme.”
Mr Landlord replies, “Okay, but see that reception room? That’s a bedroom too. And so is that storage room. So that’s a 4 bed property now.”
“Fair enough,” say Housing, “We’ll put a homeless Lone Parent and her child in there and they can claim HB to pay the rent we are going to charge.”
Our TA rates historically match the subsidy rates and I can foresee instances where the number of bedrooms will be inflated and we will be paying large amounts of benefit for small households. What I can’t foresee is anyway around this. It’s an issue because when official errors occur (and they will…) we will lose much more subsidy than we would if the subsidy rate (and therefore the rent) was tied to the size of the household.
To be fair, we made this point as part of the consultation. However, my lonely thought is thinking, “It’s not just the Landlord that can inflate the number of bedrooms…”. Gift wrapped story for the Daily Mail.
Nasty, suspicious little thought!
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