A Nice Little Earner

million-pounds cash

The Daily Mirror has been looking at the private landlord companies that, overall, receive billions of pounds of housing benefit payments from the government each year. In particular they focused on UKIP’s housing spokesman, whom they state receives ?800,000 of housing benefit money each year from Haringey council.

However the Mirror also has a nifty interactive page where you can find out which companies receive housing benefit money, council by council – including Rochford, Castle Point and Southend.

The amounts in Rochford are relatively small – we don’t have much privately rented housing. The biggest recipient is in Castle Point.

This is the situation at the moment. If the Conservatives win a majority of seats and are able to sell-off housing association homes, things will go from bad to worse (unless you are a landlord).

About the author, admin

  • I am glad that you have also raised Homelessness. The Review Committee has been investigating the extent of the issue in our District but it now seems that the Conservative Administration is attempting to pre-empt any ALL PARTY findings.

    Significant amendments are proposed to the Council’s Allocation Scheme for Social Housing or otherwise better known to residents as the Housing Register (homelessness).

    The Cabinet Member responsible for Homelessness was due to have made a Decision on this, one way or the other, on 29 April.

    No Decision has been taken.

    Is it to be delayed until after the Local Elections? If a Decision is to be delayed is it more likely to be signed off then to avoid a debate in the Election?

    The following is recommended by a Council Officer to the Cabinet Member for Decision.

    The revised Scheme will be applied to new applicants only but here is a precis;

    • The period of residence required to establish a local connection has been increased from at least the previous 2 years to at least the previous 3 years.

    • The alternative qualification of having lived in the District for 3 years in the last 5 years has been removed.

    • Local connection through employment has been amended from simply having paid employment or an offer of such (other than casual employment) to having paid employment of not less than 16 hours a week for the past 12 months.

    • Establishing a local connection through carrying out community or voluntary based activity or service has been removed.

    • Homeless applicants owed a full housing duty who have no local connection with the District who are not, or cannot, be referred to another local authority will now be placed in Band C instead of Band B.

    The full document is here (http://rochford.cmis.uk.com/Rochford/Document.ashx…)

  • Seems to me that the social housing tenants need to remember where they were before they moved into it. The move to sell these properties should be resisted. Property is already too expensive for people who are not on a high wage and taking away social housing will not help the lowest paid gain a decent home.

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}
    >