SFHA Responds to Lords’ Second Reading of Welfare Reform Bill

The SFHA has given a cautious welcome to the debate on the UK Government’s Welfare Reform proposals as the Bill reached its second reading in the House of Lords yesterday (Tuesday 13th September 2011).

However, the Federation stressed that heavy scrutiny of the Bill’s provisions was required to prevent tenants and social housing providers being unfairly penalised by them.

SFHA Policy & Strategy Manager David Ogilvie said:

“The SFHA was pleased to see many insightful and helpful contributions from the Lords in what was a generally well-informed and rounded debate that highlighted a number of our key concerns.

“However, we urge the Lords to subject the Welfare Reform Bill to the greatest possible scrutiny, or we will all pay the price in years to come. We are at risk of seeing increased homelessness, increased poverty and a more ‘broken society’ than that which the UK Government believes we already have.”

The SFHA is recommending a number of changes before the Bill becomes law.

In a briefing sent to Scottish Lords, the SFHA highlights the following concerns:

• Our opposition to the under-occupation penalty – penalising tenants who live in a property judged to be too big, even if there is no suitable alternative.
• Our call for tenants to continue to have the right to choose direct payment of Housing Benefit to the landlord to continue – this helps tenants to budget and prevents them getting into arrears.
• Our opposition to any break in the link between the housing costs subsidy and actual rents – in other words, the subsidy should be linked to fluctuations in rents.
• Our concerns about the operation of the overall benefits cap in relation to housing costs.
• Our concern about the new provision (introduced at Commons Report Stage) regarding deduction of Housing Benefit overpayments from earnings.

Independent research commissioned by the SFHA revealed that up to one in five tenants in Scotland will see their incomes fall due to the Coalition Government’s Housing Benefit cuts. The research analyses the impacts on different groups of people, and proposes a range of ways of mitigating the most severe impacts, which could see some tenants losing hundreds of pounds a year.

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