Coalition to impose sanctions on housing benefit
Part-time workers who are judged to be doing too little to find full-time work could have their Housing Benefit sanctioned by the government when Universal Credit comes into full force, according to Inside Housing.
The revelation is the latest in a long line of benefit betrayals to be inflicted on the poor by the Coalition government. The new development also means landlords stand to lose out.
The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed to Inside Housing that under Universal Credit, where a tenant is working less than 35 hours per week at minimum wage and is not eligible for JSA or ESA, then the housing element can be sanctioned instead.
It seems clear that the government is determined that it should be able to take income away from everyone who is not being properly paid by their employer. Does this seem fair to you?
Under the present system, Housing Benefit is paid direct to landlords, meaning sanctions against tenants can only be applied to out-of-work benefits like Jobseekers’ Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance. The aim is to use Universal Credit to spread the threat of sanctions so that it covers people in low-paid work as well. Would you consider any government that did this to be standing up “for hardworking people”?
The article quotes a DWP spokesperson who said: “It is only right that people claiming benefits should be aware that not sticking to the rules can have a consequence.”
This, of course, assumes that a person is breaking the rules if their employer refuses to improve their working conditions… but we know that the government has altered working conditions to ensure that employers are under no pressure to do so; the benefit cap, and the one per cent limit on the annual uprating of benefits have ensured that people without jobs will become continually worse-off, so those who are in work cannot demand pay increases for fear of being handed their P45s and told that someone else will do their job for less.
Are these the actions of a government that believes we are “all in it together”?
If anybody thinks they can find justification for this behaviour, please get in touch.
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Reblogged this on UNEMPLOYED IN TYNE & WEAR.
The wheels will come off this policy too.Is it just me or are the the Government becoming more Accident Prone by the day?
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
The Coalition adds more hardship to the very poorest members of society. This latest attack on part-time workers receiving Housing Benefit seems to me to be actually calculated to put people out on the streets. How many landlords, after all, will want to take on tenants, who are only doing part-time work, if there’s a chance that their HB, and thus the landlord’s own income, will be lost? This can only result in more homelessness, more poverty and more despair.
am sorry,but what i have read on UC is different to what dwp told ‘inside housing’.UC is a monthly household income,which is several benefits all in 1,which includes child tax/working tax and rent etc.,if you don’t comply(according to draft uc claimant statement)you will get sanctioned £10(aprx) a day until you do comply…as its a household income,which part is your rent/childtax etc as a monthly wage?thats £280 a month gone…further non-compliance..further sanctions….get fired/bad employer report..no UC at all,and since child tax for example is UC,see point??….no monthly income.to say ‘your housing element will be reduced is mis-leading…as it effects all the other..pay rent or feed the kids….its a monthly wage like working..you have to pay everything out of it….in essence to what i read..you have to earn £216 a week or face sanction…so say bye bye to your working tax/child tax…£10 a day sanction till you comply.please double check…….this is the tory’s!!
Reblogged this on glynismillward189.
Not just part-time $ if your partnerships for sickness, childcare or self employment reasons it’s you too, hours worked will be based on earnings in. So if you run a tourist business and usually spread high season originators 12 months, if you claim at all, including tax credit equivalent, you can be deemed in low season as not working (hubby has high awesomeness and low weeks here he dos admin, maintenance etc- essential s- in those low / non profit weeks we could lose tax credits (as a Carer our household income lacks my wage so is low)
How can anyone increase the number of hours they work or their rate of pay, when the unelected gov. are supplying 100,000s of free slave workers.
This government are trying to be as unpleasant as possible to all the non-rich people.
it may seem like a conundrum, but really it is quite simple. Anyone who needs to claim a benefit of any sort – including the state pension it seems – is going to have to endure the modern-day workhouse being rolled out as conditionality under UC. The poor will be disenfranchised, lack access to any legal redress, and yes, the Condems really do want people to just disappear. In our world, today, this means die, live rough, or go away into Europe if you can.
Supplying free forced labour is a direct descendant of the work house “work”, of hunger and drudgery for all, even the sick and the elderly having to work until they die. The fact it will force more & more down the same route is a desired outcome. Just like the Poor Law / work house regimes in the 19thC it is designed to be such a harsh regime that only the truly desperate will endure because they have nothing left at all, just the work house (UC with conditionality) or of dying of hunger and exposure in a gutter somewhere.
[…] Part-time workers who are judged to be doing too little to find full-time work could have their Housing Benefit sanctioned by the government when Universal Credit comes into full force, according t… […]
A person probably could survive if sanctioned if they were able to keep their home but what if they get sanctioned for some weeks, or even months, but what if they lose their home mid sanction because their Housing Benefit was stopped. How many people would be lost forever, never able to claw their way back from destitution? This is really crazy insane stuff from the DWP who seem to think that you can punish and bully people into non-existent full-time jobs. This is the madness of the asylum coupled with the brutality of the charnel house.
we all just let them do it though blogging raises awareness agreed but, it’s not stopping anything these unelected parasites do is it ?
Blogging isn’t all I do, of course.
What else do readers do? I haven’t asked them but I bet they’re busy!
Anyone care to volunteer a few comments?
This is silly. The threat to housing benefit is the greatest threat of all. This is a huge disincentive to taking work.
Well for a start, I think I have more chance of actually meeting and having lunch with the man in the moon, than UC actually running properly before 2099!
All these threats from the greedy gits in the coalition government don’t worry me anymore – they won’t get in in the next election, so they can spout as much drivel as they like about after the election :)
It will hopefully be scrapped long before then!!
Reblogged this on Jay's Journal.
Yes,we can throw our hands up in disgust at such a statement but every time a new way of taking money away from the poor,ill or disabled is thought up the evidence of how we are being divided as a nation becomes clearer. The people who are I’m Aright Jack can always turn around and say,hey,that’s a bit strong isn’t it?…and then carry on reading the paper or sipping their beer….it no longer bothers them enough to say enough is enough…..until it happens to them. The division of the people in this country is basically the same that happened to the Jews,the gypsies,the disabled,the mentally challenged,the poor etc etc under the National Socialists in the 1930’s…..the nazi’s in other words. Until the people start pulling these social engineers apart then one outrage will follow another….but don’t expect any help from the Labour Party they are just another clone of the other politicians who are the hit men for the bankers,who already own this country hook line and sinker. Only revolution will cure this situation the question is how many will stand on the front line.?
Violence isn’t the answer. They would only use it to justify themselves – and hit us with the water cannons they’ve been buying and testing.
Ok steve what is the answer, what exactly are people supposed to do? How are they supposed to fight a huge propaganda machine, which is on the coalition’s side. If you want to criticize others inaction, what exactly are you doing to fight all these injustices?