11 February 2013 | By Carl Brown
The government’s bedroom tax won’t work in Liverpool, a housing association targeted by protestors has said.
Activists protested at the offices of Liverpool Mutual Homes last week about the bedroom tax. It is understood LMH was targeted because it briefly considered a scheme under which it would have paid the bedroom tax for tenants carrying out voluntary work. LMH, which has lobbied against the bedroom tax policy, has since dropped the plan.
Under the bedroom tax social tenants who are of working age and receiving housing benefit will have their payments cut if they are deemed to be under-occupying their home. To avoid the penalty they will have to move to a smaller property. But figures now published by LMH show four in 10 social homes in Liverpool are three bed-properties while only 23.5 per cent are one-bed properties and 28 per cent are two bed.
Angela Forshaw, director of housing at LMH, said: ‘Even if every LMH tenant agreed to downsize it would take us up to seven years to be able to offer them suitable alternative housing and this doesn’t take into account the current waiting list or a requirement for us to accommodate urgent cases such as statutory homeless people.
‘The housing stock data underlines what we have been saying since the government first introduced the policy: the bedroom tax won’t work in Liverpool.’
7 Responses
It won’t work anywhere!
The bedroom tax won’t work anywhere, it’s an ill thought out plan that doesn’t consider variables that may help the economy. For instance some Grandparents help with child minding so that children can meet work commitments, if a Grandparent had only 1 bedroom & children stayed then Social Services & the Police would soon be banging at the door. The implementation has caused me a lot of problems because I wanted to downsize & now there is a huge increase in demand to move to smaller properties, if I don’t achieve this prior to implementation then every week I will be worse off financially so won’t have the money needed to move & furnish another home. The poor are being targeted because they don’t have the money to fight back, anyone with resources targeted by the Government have forced a U change. Poor yet again paying the price for the rich bankers.
Money is the God with this government,poor people are an easy target.
so you’re telling me that someone who gets paid £xxxxx amount a year has dreamt up this stupid idea ?? (along with all the other shite) it’s absolutely disgusting…
is this the spark that begins the revolution ??
I hope so because it’s not the world I wanted to bring my chidren or grandchildren into. This Govt is totally out of touch with reality.
I think so this Govt is behaving worse than criminals. This is not a world fit for my children or grandchildren. Shame on them