HOUSING BENEFIT CUTS WILL HIT LESS WELL OFF
Gordon has warned impending housing cuts announced in the Budget will hit the less well-off hardest. He commented after two separate analyses, one by the TUC and the other by the Department of Work & Pensions’ own impact assessment unit, showed that the North West and especially areas like Blackpool, with a large rented housing sector, would be particularly hard hit.
The analyses showed that nearly 131,000 families in the North West receiving Local Housing Allowance will lose £520 a year. Calculating rent allowance on the lower end of the market rather than the median and removing a £15 a week extra payment for tenants who find a good deal on rents are part of the small print that will mean for example that Blackpool pensioners on pension credit will lose an average £11 a week while lone parents will be harder hit still, losing an average £13 a week. Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people have conducted a report that shows the cuts will affect 12,420 households in Blackpool.
‘These effects were hidden away in the small print of the Budget that now even the Government’s own assessment team have shown how unfair and regressive they are going to be in a town like Blackpool where we have above-average numbers of pensioners, lone parents and families dependent on renting in the private sector’, Gordon said.
‘Taken together with the warning sent by the Equalities Minister Theresa May in June to the Chancellor that ‘there are real risks women, disabled people and older workers will be disproportionately affected’ by the Budget and other spending cuts, they point to grim times ahead for some of the more vulnerable groups and families in Blackpool’, Gordon said.
Gordon said that when Parliament resumes in September he will be tabling questions to Ministers to discover what consultation and research they have done on the differential impact of the cuts on various groups in the North West and the Fylde ‘These cuts are particularly short-sighted because if they push people in Blackpool – pensioners, poorer families, lone parents – into poverty and risking losing their homes – it’s our local councils and Blackpool council-tax payers who will have to pick up the tab for emergency housing and social support – at a time when council services are being cut through the reduction in grant-funding from the new Government. The Housing and Benefits Ministers should urgently review the impact of these cuts and look at withdrawing them.’
