CUTS TO housing benefits in England and Wales may result in significant numbers of schoolchildren being taught in temporary classrooms as their families are forced to move home, according to a department of work and pensions report.
The report warns politicians that this would be the consequence of orchestrating the reform of the £20 billion-a-year benefit budget.
Most housing benefit claimants are on low wages, not benefits, and opponents of the move by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan-Smith warn that the reforms could drive thousands of people out of high-cost areas in London and other major English cities once they are in place.
Almost one million people could be affected by the changes, said the report. Benefit for council tenants is to be set at a maximum of £400 a week for four-bedroomed homes and £340 for three-bedroomed homes. The new rules will come into force for existing council tenants from January 2012, but will affect new tenants from next April.
In its findings, the social security advisory committee said the reforms to housing benefits are “a high-risk policy that may have far-reaching adverse consequences, affecting not only the ability of people on low incomes to find decent affordable housing, but the workings of local labour markets and public services”.
However, it accepts the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government’s contention that housing benefit costs must be tackled – the bill has risen from £11 billion in 1999-2000 to more than £22 billion today. The committee also accepted that eight out of 10 families will lose just £10 a week from the changes, which are intended to cut £2 billion from the total cost within five years.
However, it does warn that there may be an increase in the number of households falling behind in their rents, facing evictions, or ending up homeless and that it could “increase the number of households living in overcrowded conditions”.
Mr Duncan-Smith has expressed the hope that landlords will settle for lower rents as these will be paid directly by work and pensions, rather than their tenants. Local authorities are obliged to find places for new children coming into their district “even if they have reached capacity”, the advisers warn, while funding from the department of education only “follows the child although with some lag”.
“The receiving local authority may need to build temporary classrooms in the short term, or consider capital projects in the long term, or to relocate children to a school further away in order to provide a school place, while the ‘home’ local authority would be left with a number of surplus places which may be costly to maintain,” the report warned.
The changes to families living in five-bedroomed houses will, the committee acknowledged, affect only a small number, but this group will be at a “much increased risk of being in poverty” subsequently, while many could be affected by overcrowding if they have to move to smaller properties.
