This week Parliament has been on recess and I have been home in Swindon keeping busy. On Tuesday I visited the Chippenham Close Community Centre in Penhill for the weekly coffee morning.
The Centre is a fantastic story of a community coming together to rescue the building and restore it to become a meeting place and safe space that they can use. It hosts the coffee morning, bingo nights and there are plans to also offer a youth club. Managed by a committee of willing local volunteers it is a great example of a community pulling together to help each other out and I was extremely impressed.
I was invited to the coffee morning to come and talk to local residents about any issues they wanted to raise. Whilst there were not many raising national issues, there were a few who were concerned about welfare changes, notably what has been labelled the 'bedroom tax'. I fully appreciate these concerns, but there has been a lot of misleading information put out there which helps no-one.
The first point is that it is not a tax. It is a Housing Benefit reduction for those with spare rooms, ending the subsidy given to people in houses bigger than their current needs. The second myth is that it is driven by a desire to save money. Not true. In Swindon, there are thousands of people on the Housing List in genuine need, whilst there are bedrooms in Council properties that are not being used. This is fundamentally unfair to those on the List. I visited a family in a one-bed flat whose children were forced to sleep on the sofa. Just round the corner lie rows of family homes occupied by one or two people. These spare rooms are being subsidised by the Council when the money could be spent trying to house those still waiting. Where is the fairness in that?
That is why we are ending this subsidy, asking people with a spare room to contribute £11 a week towards it. It is not compulsory, and for those who are concerned about affording it or losing their spare room by taking on a lodger, there are options. There is funding available through Discretionary Housing Payments for those who need their spare room and cannot afford to pay for it. There is also the option of moving. Whilst there may not be any Council properties available, Housing Benefit can cover the costs of renting privately.
The end of the subsidy puts Council Tenants alongside those renting privately on Housing Benefit, and the vast majority of average families for whom a spare room or two is simply unaffordable. With so many in need of housing, it is a fair step in trying to give them the home that they need.
