‘Bedroom tax’ blunder hits tenants in Wiltshire

Sixty-seven people in Wiltshire – three of them in the Marlborough area – have been caught by an error in the government’s ‘bedroom tax’ rules which meant they were applied to people who should have been exempt.

Due to a drafting mistake in the 2012 Welfare Reform Act, people who have occupied the same house since 1996 should be exempt from the rules about ‘under-occupation’.  

Instead they have either been charged additional rent for their ‘extra’ rooms or have been forced to move to other, usually single bedroom, social housing. 

Some will have simply forfeited their tenancies or been evicted.

The coalition government’s policy was aimed at making better use of the available stock of social housing. It has had many other consequences.

Many difficulties have arisen because of the failure to define what constitutes a ‘bedroom’ and what ‘spare’ means.  These problems have especially affected the disabled and people with long-term illnesses who may need a room that is not specifically another bedroom but is used for medical equipment or for an occasional carer’s overnight stay.

Precisely how many people have been caught up in this blunder is disputed. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates the number at 5,000 out of the 520,000 covered by the ‘bedroom tax’ rules.

Most other estimates put the number who have been wrongly included in the ‘bedroom tax’ at between 40,000 and 60,000 tenants.

In Wiltshire a total of 2,893 people were due to be affected by the rule.  The proportion who have paid too much or had to move because it was not realised they should be exempt is 2.3 per cent.

That is much lower than many other councils have estimated for their own tenants. Even 2.3 per cent would mean that across the country 12,000 would have been wrongly included in the bedroom tax rulings.

The rebate due to these people is thought to be about £560.  But many will have given up valuable rights embodied in tenancies they have had to surrender.

The policy has had other serious consequences.  A National Housing Federation survey found that two-thirds of households affected by the bedroom tax have fallen into rent arrears (that is about 350,000 households) and one in seven (about 74,000) have received eviction risk letters and face losing their homes.

These people have found it impossible to pay the higher rent and impossible to find somewhere cheaper to live because there is a shortage of smaller homes.

Already in September last year the Daily Mail reported that the 50,000 people were behind with their rent and were facing eviction because of the rules.

This week the disability charity Papworth Trust has found that one third of disabled people affected by the rule had been refused compensatory funds from the government’s ‘discretionary housing payment’ (DHP) money – money that was supposed to ease the initial hardships the policy produced.

The Conservative Party’s “Spare Room Subsidy: Myth Buster” which many MPs included on their websites, states: “Eviction is clearly not something we are seeking to achieve and we have made substantial funds available for vulnerable people.”

“If for any reason, DHPs are not effectively supporting families, then we will look at whether this is the most effective way of supporting people.”  So far all that has happened is that the exemption ‘loophole’ will be closed on March 3.

The government has been fighting a losing battle to stop this policy being called the ‘bedroom tax’.  They say it has nothing to do with tax. 

But opponents argue that the government’s preferred “spare room subsidy” is also wrong as there is no financial subsidy involved and the definition of a spare room is too vague to be useful.

Figures for those affected by the failure to exempt tenants who have lived in their homes since 1996 were supplied to MNO by Wiltshire Council under a Freedom of Information request.