Dear Mr Buckland,
Although not a claimant of Housing Benefit myself, I am very concerned about the changes which the government is enacting. Firstly, there is the question of the cap on total claims and then of the imposition of the “bedroom criteria”.
I have heard the justifications that HB is too costly and that claimants should not be seen to receive benefits that “hard working families” do not. The very people whose HB is being reduced are often those very same “hard working families”, struggling to exist on the minimum wage.
If your government is really concerned about the high cost of HB, wouldn’t it make more sense to introduce rent controls and also to regulate short term tenancies, so that greedy private landlords could not take advantage of peoples’ desperate need for a home? We have heard only today on Radio 4 about the desperate plight of private renters in Newham whose landlords are hoping to profit from lucrative Olympic rentals.
The housing needs of the poor have been ignored for too long by governments of both major parties, while owner occupation has been promoted as the only “respectable” form of tenure. Even now in the face of a housing crisis of major proportions the government is trying to persuade council tenants to buy their homes by offering an even greater discount, thus compounding the disaster of the original right to buy scheme, which so drastically reduced public housing stocks in this country. What is needed now is the sort of major Council House building programme which was embarked upon by both parties after WW2.
This would I suggest be a better and more compassionate response to our current housing situation than punishing the poor for their poverty and justifying such a disgraceful policy by pretending that is based on spurious criteria of fairness.
Yours Sincerely,
Eileen George
Swindon Tenants Campaign Group 
I whole heartily agree. Swindon took hundreds of families from London overspilll, this in turn attracted industries and employment. If there was a will, it could be done again. We need another David Murray John, somebody with vision and foresight. Let us hope the forthcoming local election makes a clean sweep and identifies candidates prepared to put the people of Swindon first.
Marcus
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If they pull this one off then I guess the work house will be next.
The people that though this one up are the same as the last lot they can’t keep their dirty hands off anything., remember the selling off of the forests,stupid idea but clever, think of all the land for the developers to get there hands on further down the line.
You see they know poor people generally don’t have the skills to fight back.
This new housing act is very disturbing and god knows where it is going.
There is bound to be more hardship upon tenants, I think giving an incentive to move is fair enough but starving you out is quite something else.
Not all tenants are scroungers and have worked hard to get on in life but to be brought down be recession after recession, I guess we will have to move into a thee bedroom tent problem is we will be force off the land like gypsies, talking of that Hitler wanted to get rid of the gypsies. We might have won the war but for whom ?.If couples can have more children that’s most likely to happen but I think the powers to be are ahead on that one and are likely to have something else hiding around the corner,
Case scenario : Couple with boy and girl over ten living in thee bedroom house,kid’s grow up and one leaves home, fine one mouth left to feed but problem is got to pay more for emty room so move to a two bedroom house,fine but now the other one leaves home so we downsize to a one bedroom flat, whats wrong with that, comments welcome.
We have now moved thee times and I will probly die of stress as moving is classed as very stressfull, where are we going with this..Trouble is that you may well be sitting on the fence now but mark my words nothing lasts for ever your circumstances can change over night,redundancy,illness or bereavment to name a few. If this is for the better god knows how much worse it is going to get.
Bob the builder
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