By Mark Smulian | 16 August 2013
The ‘bedroom tax’ will lead to the break-up of rural communities, the Action with Communities in Rural England pressure group has warned.
It said the ‘tax’ – under which housing benefit claimants pay an average of £14 extra per week for 'spare' bedrooms in their home – would force people to leave villages because of the lack of one- and two-bedroom homes available in the countryside.
This would mean that rural tenants would have to move to urban areas if they could not make up the rent shortfall caused by the benefit cut.
Acre said the government had failed to ‘rural-proof’ the policy and called for settlements with 3,000 or fewer inhabitants to be excluded from it.
Chief executive Janice Banks said: ‘The Department for Work and Pensions forecast in its impact assessment that the policy could have a greater impact on rural areas because there are fewer appropriate size homes available locally.
‘Yet it went ahead with a blanket approach which will inevitably force rural tenants out of villages where they have lived for years, taking them away from their extended families, schools and support networks. It will take key workers away from areas where they perform vital roles.’
She said relief payments from councils to those affected would be only temporary, and social housing providers faced mounting arrears from tenants unable to make up the shortfall.
‘There is a dearth of one and two bedroom properties in the countryside and market rents are traditionally high,’ Banks said.
‘Our fear is that the accumulated changes in benefits, including Universal Credit, cuts to council tax support and the bedroom tax, will make it even harder for poorer people to remain in rural areas. It is yet another example of the ‘rural penalty’ paid by countryside communities.’
The warning comes after the Local Government Association said earlier this week that councils did not have enough funding to make Discretionary Housing Payments to all people who were struggling with housing costs.
