ROOF Blog

Hundreds of out-of-work families who have been living in expensive homes at the taxpayers’ expense are facing eviction after changes to housing benefit announced yesterday. Alistair Darling said that from October next year the most expensive properties would be removed from the housing benefit calculation. Housing benefit, which can be as much as £1,800 a week, discouraged people from working and was unfair on those who accepted smaller, cheaper homes, he said. Housing benefit will be capped at £1,100 a week, meaning that 13,000 families, mostly in London, will have to move out of their current properties and into somewhere more modest.

Ministers are to crack down on excessive housing benefit payments in a series of reforms designed to curb the increasing £17 billion annual rental bill. Yvette Cooper, the work and pensions secretary, plans to cap the highest rates paid to private landlords — as much as £1,800 a week — to stop families on benefit living in palatial homes at the taxpayers’ expense. The reforms are expected to save hundreds of millions of pounds a year, but could result in hundreds of families being evicted from expensive accommodation with six months’ notice. The housing benefit bill, which covers rents in the private and social 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 forecast that this will rise to £20 billion by 2011 because of the recession, rising private rents and a critical shortage of social housing. The average rent in social housing is only £72 a week against £108 in the private sector.

The government is to offer cash rewards of up to £500 to people who report neighbours they suspect are unlawfully subletting their council home.

Ministers have been told that between 50,000 and 200,000 social rented homes in England are occupied by unauthorised tenants, at a time when waiting lists are full and housing projects have stalled.

They are expected to target 8,000 tenancy cheats in a first wave of investigations this week across 145 local authorities after a trawl of council records by the Audit Commission.

There is a growing crisis as demand for social housing has soared during the recession.

About 1.8m households are on waiting lists in England, while just 60,000 social homes have been built in the past two years.

John Healey, the housing minister, said: ‘We can’t allow cheats to hang on to the tenancies of council houses they don’t need and don’t live in.’

The crackdown will be difficult for subletters, who have no rights or protection if a social home is reclaimed, and who can be evicted in as few as seven days.