The Tory ‘Bedroom Tax’ trap – follow government advice and your council will sue you
Thanks are due to Joe Halewood for bringing this to light:
Bedroom tax tenants will be fined £30,000 and placed on the rogue landlord database if they do what the Tories advise them to do and take in lodgers to mitigate the bedroom tax!
Take in a lodger to mitigate the bedroom tax in your spare room as official advice but if you do then your local council will fine you £30,000 for following government advice because the room you let out to the lodger and for which you are being charged bedroom tax is not a bedroom as it is not of the minimum size to be a bedroom!
[According to government advice, minimum bedroom sizes are] 6.51 square metres … 70 square feet… 10.22 square metres … 110 square feet [for two adults] and 4.64 square metres … 50 square feet [for children aged 10 and younger].The government (and social landlords and bedroom tax decision makers in local councils) and the courts will say these minimum sizes ONLY apply to:
(a) private landlords and
(b) ONLY in HMOs and
(c) ONLY when there are 5 people or more living in the same property.
One option that the government say is available for those nasty social tenants who are under occupying … is for the tenant to let out their allegedly spare room to a lodger. YET that would make the tenant a private landlord who is creating a HMO in a property with 5 persons and meets all of the criteria for being a rogue landlord and be subject to a £30,000 fine and to go on to the rogue landlord list for letting out a bedroom that is less than 70 square feet.
Source: Bedroom taxed tenants fined £30k for following Tory advice! | Speye Joe
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You just can’t make these stories up government cock up once again oh dear
So are the B&B owners housing evicted tenants, often families, in one room on the rogue landlord lists and being fined, or are they immune because the Council sent them?
‘Tiny Tim’ Cratchit wins court ruling against bedroom tax; his spare room measures no larger than a book page, says judge.
If you wish to “let” you bedroom then take them in as lodgers when that nonsense won’t apply. Lodgers have the whole use their “landland’s” house and live in the main living area with their own bedroom.
So, would I be right in saying that if you’re living in ‘private landlord’ property, the council will fine you, but if it’s council property, you won’t be fined?
Surely what you could do to avoid the issue, if the property permitted it, and if you were able to do it personally, would be to simply swap rooms round, and rent out the larger room? (I’m assuming the councils where rooms were being ‘rented out’, knew what size rooms WERE being rented out)?