In more than 30 locations across Britain people opposed to the Bedroom Tax will be gathering in city centres to protest against the policy on March 16 at 1pm, reports Andy Richards. Foster parents, disabled persons, single parents and families with a recently bereaved member are the people whom this policy hurts the most.
The Bedroom Tax works by reducing the Housing Benefit (HB) of a household which is deemed to be “underoccupying” a council or housing association dwelling according to a draconian set of criteria. Two children of the same sex are expected to share a bedroom up to age 16, as are a couple, even where illness or disability makes this impossible. Two children of different sexes are expected to share up to age 10.
The reduction is 14% for one bedroom “too many” and 25% if it is two or more.
The stated justification for the policy is the need to “free up” larger dwellings for families by encouraging people to downsize. But the policy applies across the country whether or not there is any appreciable unmet need for accommodation for families, and irrespective of whether smaller accommodation is even available to people, and regardless of any special needs of the household.
In any case, statistics show that social tenants make five times more efficient use of their accommodation than owner occupiers, and it is unfair to tax bedrooms when 700,000+ houses lie empty. Regardless of the fact that some social tenants may arguably have a “spare” bedroom, the far lower rents in the social sector mean that the HB spend on these tenants is far less than it would be if they were renting privately.
All of the main parties attack the rise in the housing benefit bill, as though it was some random occurrence, or based on the greed of individual tenants. In fact it is the inevitable consequence of the Tories’ deregulation of the private rented sector in the 1980’s, as they themselves acknowledge.
On 30 January 1991 the then housing minister Sir George Young was asked in parliament what the government was going to do about unaffordable rents. ‘Housing benefit will underpin market rents – we have made that absolutely clear,’ he said. ‘If people cannot afford to pay that market rent, housing benefit will take the strain.’
Today the majority of working age HB recipients are in fact working, as wages are squeezed ever more and rents and food prices, fares and fuel cost rise.
But the bedroom tax is not the only attack which the ConDems are imposing on the poorest. They have also abolished Council Tax Benefit (CTB), which reduces the amount of council tax which people on a low income have to pay. The replacement for CTB is a local scheme for which local councils can make up their own rules – but with 10% less funding. The result is a patchwork of rebate schemes which vary wildly from council to council, and even the poorest residents will have to pay some council tax from meagre benefits which have already been cut in real terms.
While tenants are being hit with the bedroom tax and paying more council tax, benefits and tax credits are being “uprated” by just 1% this year and for the next two years.
Later this year, all of the means-tested benefits and tax credits are being subsumed into Universal Credit, which will mean more cuts in entitlement for many and harsh new conditions for receiving anything at all. People are expected to claim UC online, even though access to the internet is at its lowest levels at the bottom of the income scale.
Also lurking in the background is the gradual replacement of Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payments. Disturbing evidence is already emerging that PIP will have more onerous conditions and is designed to reduce the number of recipients.
Underpinning this is an expansion of workfare – free labour at the disposal of big business, and substituting for permanent jobs.
One of the ways in which the ConDems have been able to attack benefits with relatively little opposition so far is by whipping up a shocking climate of scapegoating, demonization and disinformation, aided by the tabloid media.
So successful has this been that TUC research has discovered that much of the public support for benefit cuts is based on completely false beliefs about the levels of the benefits, the ease of getting them and levels of fraud.
For example they found that –
On average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is 3 per cent.
On average people think that 27 per cent of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently, while the government’s own figure is 0.7 per cent.
On average people think that almost half the people (48 per cent) who claim Jobseeker’s Allowance go on to claim it for more than a year, while the true figure is just under 30 per cent (27.8 per cent).
On average people think that an unemployed couple with two school-age children would get £147 in Jobseeker’s Allowance – more than 30 per cent higher than the £111.45 they would actually receive – a £35 over-calculation.
Things we should be doing
Support campaigns against the bedroom tax – oppose evictions and call upon councils not to evict tenants in rent arrears caused by it
Back people who cannot pay council tax against the bailiffs
Continue to support campaigns against workfare, such as Boycott Workfare – take the fight into the unions and ensure that unions boycott workfare schemes
Argue against demonisation of claimants – be they unemployed, disabled or in work.
Call for statutory rent controls in the private rented sector
Abolish the bedroom tax and the “right to buy” in the social rented sector
Below are the actions that we have details of. Three are happening on a different date – these are listed in bold. To find out about events not listed here or to add other please mail : [email protected]
Manchester (https://www.facebook.com/events/432490873492651)(Karen Broady)
Nottingham (https://www.facebook.com/events/613425092006763/)(Alice Grice)
Durham (https://www.facebook.com/events/472468769485261/) (Valerie Hudson)
Dundee (Scottish Trade Unions Congress will be picketing the Lib Dem Conference)
York (https://www.facebook.com/events/475419315839914) (Owain Gardner)
Southampton (https://www.facebook.com/events/147235202106736/) (Ken Chalk)
Sheffield (https://www.facebook.com/events/495591593830487) (Harry Barham)
Warrington (https://www.facebook.com/events/489244444444222/) (Wayne Blackburn)
Bolton (https://www.facebook.com/events/433548143393611) (Kate Challender)
Exeter (https://www.facebook.com/events/354841587954812)
Runcorn (https://www.facebook.com/events/310901115699678/) (Michelle Bridge)
Plymouth (https://www.facebook.com/events/456044871133544/) (Suzy Franklin & Charlene Sibley)
Weymouth (https://www.facebook.com/groups/394211240674665/) (Theresa Green)
Peterborough (https://www.facebook.com/events/385752301522770/) (Lisa Forbes)
Norwich (https://www.facebook.com/events/434950896582746/) (Emma Corlett)
Newcastle (https://www.facebook.com/events/572779112732626/) (Sarah Hay)
London ( on 30/03/13) (https://www.facebook.com/events/147409045413846/)
Liverpool (https://www.facebook.com/events/530193890345347/) (Debra Power & Claire Chapple)
Leeds (https://www.facebook.com/events/465476180185983) (Neil Walshaw & Alex Sobel)
Hull (https://www.facebook.com/events/138255043008741/) (Dermot Rathbone)
Hastings (https://www.facebook.com/events/168029903345935) (Kyrsty Winch)
Glasgow (on 30/03/13 https://www.facebook.com/events/369488576491663)
Edinburgh (on 30/03/13) (https://www.facebook.com/events/574333722596462/)
Darlington (https://www.facebook.com/events/299400406855344/) (James Doran
Croydon (https://www.facebook.com/events/148269551999695) (Bonnie Ash)
Chester (https://www.facebook.com/events/146522765508913/) (Dr Neil Jones)
Carlisle (https://www.facebook.com/events/163903523761180/) (Jaci Champney & Lisa Sherriff)
Bath (https://www.facebook.com/events/165438936942419) (Vicky Drew & Sam Baldwin)
Oxford (https://www.facebook.com/events/415841695176263) (Beverley Clack & Michelle Paule)
Brighton (https://www.facebook.com/events/578882008789864) (Adrian Morris & Michelle Maher)
Birmingham (https://www.facebook.com/events/212109875580341/) (Rhiannon Lockley)
Belfast (https://www.facebook.com/events/331242963654679/) (Betty Culpeck & C Dunlop)
Subscribe in a reader
Need Protests in at Least 300 Locations in the UK
Agreed, but not necessarily on one day. We must keep up the pressure and attend more than one event if possible. Holding them all one one day might dilute attendance and numbers at each event are important too.
I wish a peaceful but effective day to all taking part, I will be at the London one with my brother. Very disappointed there are no events in Wales listed.
I agree with Zena. This needs to be ongoing, not just a one off march. We had only two marches in London so far against austerity on 26 March 2011, and 20 October 2012 which shows it was not by far enough to stop the NHS Bill and attacks on Welfare, and now this bedroom tax. The Govt obviously get the impression the left is fragmented and toothless at the moment because at the moment they don’t see us as a threat at all, that is why they are doing their dammedest and they are not even half way through their term. Please, let us turn that impression they have around, and make them feel they cannot be trodden over, shat on etc.. anymore. We have to be a force to be reckoned on. I am not prepared to just go on a one off polite march. I am willing and ready to fight for my rights. There is going to be alot of vulnerable folk to who we need to defend against evictions and bailiffs. We fought against the poll tax of Thatcher in the 90s, we can do it again!
Well said Louise.
In 1915, the women of Glasgow held a march to Glasgow Green
after putting rents strike notices in their window in protest against the unfair rent rises. The Government of the time had new bring in a new law to freeze the increase.
The same tactics were used in Scotland to fight the Poll Tax. signs went up saying ‘No Poll Tax Here’ People just refused to pay it and it would have taken too much money to take everyone to court.Among the leaders of the protest was alice sheridan and her son Tommy. When sheriff officers turned up at peoples door to evict they were met by groups of around four hundred people. The bailliff ran away.
I’ll be posting a ‘Bedroom Tax Strike’ notice in my window. I just wish I was better at drawing. I’d love to do a poster with a child from the waist up, sleeping with her head on a pillow.
Lets keep up the pressure
I will be doing the the same ipswich
I’m from South Wales and I can’t find ANY protests here at all which I find really strange as people are up in arms about it!!
Could you please forward details of the London March asap which I believe will be held on 30/03/13. But we need to do much more than just the odd march. Govt don’t see us as a threat therefore they know they can screw people. There is going to be alot of vulnerable folk out there who will face evictions and bailiffs. we must not leave them high and dry, we must fight to protect anyone faced with such grizzly prospect, and we must fight for our rights.
I can’t understand why there is nothing happening in Bristol. It has a large stock of Council and social housing, and a large number of people claiming Housing Benefit. It should be an absolute gift to this campaign. I was a Poll Tax activist in 89/90 and we had 65 anti-poll tax groups in this city. Certainly, not all of them were active or substantial, but there were enough to build a very successful and militant campaign. Why this difference?
Organise one, post it here and on other sites. What I’d like to see is a march in Cameron constituency. Drag them all into the real world.
EVERYBODY THAT GETS HOUSING BENEFIT OR HAS TO PAY BEDROOM TAX / WHAT WE ALL GOT TO DO IS NOT PAY THEY CAN’T TAKE US ALL TO COURT IT WOULD COST MILLIONS AND TAKE TWENTY YEAR TO DO IT WOULD NOT BE WORTH THERE WILE BUT WE HAVE TO ALL REFUSE OTHER WISE POINT LESS IT’S TIME FOR ACTION AND LESS IDLE TALK ON ERE IF ALL MEMBERS DONE AS MUCH WRITING ON ERE AND SAME IN ACTIONS WE WOULD DEFEAT THE B.ARSTARDS
its about time all the people got together to sort there people out making decisions how we should live, if they want a bedroom tax and cuts start with the mps million Aires and the monarchy. leave every one else alone that is struggling to live.
Well me and the mrs are having matrimonial problems and she now uses the spare room so they cant expect me to pay bedroom tax.
Scrap MPS Expenses Tax the Rich Hands Off the Poor
Dear Dave,
I would like to remind you of something.
Your speech on April 27th 2010.
You said: “ Let’s mend our broken society.”
You said: “ I know I’ve been criticized for saying our society is broken and I know I will again.”
You said: “Something is broken. Society is broken.
The broken society is not one thing alone.
It is not just the crime.
It is a whole stew of violence, anti-social behaviour, debt, addiction, family breakdown, educational failure, poverty and despair.
This is life – or the backdrop of life – for millions of people in this country.
So how should we respond?
The first response – the human response – is to feel unutterably sad at so much waste.
Wasted hopes. Wasted potential. Wasted lives.
But sadness and anger aren’t going to change anything on their own.
Mending the broken society needs head as well as heart.”
You said: “There is, I believe, only one way out of this national crisis – and that is what I have called the Big Society.
A society where we see social responsibility, not state control, as the principal driving force for social progress.
A society where we come together, and work together, to solve problems.
A society where we remember every day that we’re all in this together.
And today, I want to make the case for the values that should drive the creation of the Big Society – and the policy agenda that flows from those values.
It requires, I believe, drawing on the deepest values of Conservatism, giving power to people not the state, strengthening families, encouraging responsibility, common sense and rigour, and applying these values to the key aims of improving the lives of people in our country – especially the very poorest”.
You said: ‘The poorest are getting poorer”.
You said: “We need to move from big government to the Big Society – a society with personal and collective responsibility right at its heart.
To set off on this new course, we will be guided by the philosophy of progressive conservatism.
Progressive – because if the Big Society exists for any reason, it must be to help the most disadvantaged in our country and seek to create a more united and equal place for us all.”
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY YOU SAID: “Above all, we will be the most family-friendly Government you’ve ever seen in this country, because I believe that the family is the crucible of responsibility.
Strong families lead to strong societies.
It’s as simple as that.
We are going to do all that we can to support every family – and every kind of family
Many of our biggest problems start and end with the family – and there can be little progress until we recognise this.”
So Dave.
You were right on one thing.
You will be “criticized for saying our society is broken and I know I will again.”
Because I am criticizing you now.
You talked of a broken society and you acknowledged that : “Many of our biggest problems start and end with the family – and there can be little progress until we recognise this.”
So what do you do, Dave?
You introduce the bedroom tax, abolish council tax benefit and replace it with local schemes forcing local authorities to clean up your mess, and cap benefit payments even though you acknowledge that: “‘the poorest are getting poorer”.
How does this fix our broken society, Dave?
Please.
Explain.
You instruct ATOS to carry out work capacity assessments on your behalf.
So far, Dave, 7,100 people have died after being placed in groups entitled to unconditional support because they were considered to ill or disabled to work.
1,300 people have died after being placed in a work related activity group.
And, 2,200 people have died before their ATOS assessment was even completed.
And, on average, a further 73 people die every week.
So, please Dave.
Explain.
This is nothing short of the culling of the most desperate and vulnerable members of our society…..I call it : “The Cameron Culling Policy”.
And it doesn’t end there, does it, Dave?
How can you claim: “Above all, we will be the most family-friendly Government you’ve ever seen in this country, because I believe that the family is the crucible of responsibility” and then introduce welfare reforms that could see families forced out of their homes?
Homes where families have been brought up, homes where grand children visit to stay with nanny and grandad for the weekend, homes that people have built up over the years and hold precious memories.
You even target the homes of those out fighting for your country by demanding bedroom tax whilst they are away- men and women risking their lives fighting for YOUR country.
Home is where the heart is Dave.
And you are ripping out what is left of the heart of the already broken society you talk about-and damaging it beyond repair.
So, yes, Dave.
Society is broken.
And YOU broke it.
Haven’t you worked that one out yet?
Sincerely,
Tracy Collins and the 4000+ people who have already signed this. Not signed yet? Then please do so and then copy and paste into an email and forward to all of your contacts asking them to do the same. Cameron is caving in under pressure- the exclusions announced today prove that- keep fighting until he crumbles completely.
https://www.change.org/petitions/the-government-stop-bedroom-tax-the-atos-assessment-the-abolition-of-council-tax-and-universal-payment
WHY BUCKINGHAM PALACE NOT INCLUDED IN BED ROOM TAX.. BUCKINGHAM PALACE HAS 775 ROOMS. THIS INCLUDE 19 STATE ROOMS, 52 ROYAL AND GUEST BEDROOMS, 188 STAFF BEDROOMS, 92 OFFICES AND MANY MORE EMPTY ROOMS AND BED ROOMS AND ONLY QUEEN AND PHILIP LIVING IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE…
Sample letter for us all to use to appeal against housing benefit reduction re bedroom tax
http://speye.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/an-example-of-a-standard-letter-to-challenge-the-bedroom-tax-hb-decision/
Dear Sirs,
I received your decision letter dated INSERT DATE and referenced above that imposed an under occupation charge, or bedroom tax of 14% / 25% (delete as appropriate) on my existing award of Housing Benefit.
I consider this unwarranted yet in order to challenge this in the correct way and potentially by way of formal appeal I require further information to be sent to me within 7 days of this letter and the urgency of that is to ensure I have enough time to formulate any such appeal and in full knowledge of the facts of my case within the time allowed; OR in the alternative I request the deadline for any such formal appeal be moved to 21 days after I receive the request information below:
1. A written copy of the Council’s policy and decision-making procedures in relation to referring a socially housed claimant decision to the Rent Officer Service.
2. A full explanation of how the council decided that (INSERT ADDRESS) was determined to be a 3 bed property for the under occupation charge and this to include what involvement if any of my landlord, (INSERT LANDLORD NAME) in this process.
Please state by way of covering letter with the requested information any changed deadline date from above with regard to a formal appeal.
Yours etc
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
PS, all letters to the council have to be hand written
UK Uncut have called a day of action targeting the bedroom tax and benefit cap. From their website: Save the date – Saturday 13th April- Who wants to evict a millionaire?
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/uk-uncut-to-target-the-bedroom-tax-who-wants-to-evict-a-millionaire/
this dosent quite affect me…yet!! im still supporting the protests though.if we all stick together then weve already won 🙂 ive sighned loads of petitions on this. im one of the terrified tenants against greedy government tenant and you can sighn ours too if you would it would help us greatly.anyway untill the next bedroom tax protest then all of you stand firm and stay well.all the best.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/44605 !THANKYOU!
Tax the Rich Stuff the Bedroom Tax Hands Off the Poor
Con Dem Scum Out of Office Now Not Never
Stuff the Poxy Wait Wait Wait
Evict the Pratts from Westminster and Office that will Defeat Them
Britain Stop being So Bloody Zombie and Slavish
Endeavour For Revolution Let there be Revolution so that
the Poor will be Helped and the Arrogance of Selfish Rich People
Broken
BROKEN BRITAIN UNDER TORIES – DEMOCRACY-MORE LIKE 30’s GERMANY
If it took the Government the same amount of time to introduce positive measures instead of negative ones the Country would be on its way to recovery instead of its Demise .CCS Closed Court Sessions were sneaked in without much Media attention and are now in practice when ECHR is ditched it will be little more than a Nazi state practiced in 30’s Germany.All Rights ‘surrendered ‘to the State .A man arrested for threatening behaviour at an ATOS assessment was in custody before he appeared before a Closed Court then remanded back to Police custody .He has been denied family visits and representation .
Who said things couldn’t get any worse . http://www.brokenbritainundertories.com
BROKEN BRITAIN UNDER TORIES –YOU ASK THE WEALTHY BUT JUST TAKE OFF THE NEEDY
There has probably never been such an administrative disaster in the UK’s Political History Publicly showing Discrimination against the Poorest in Society and the Rich .Smith the Fascist openly asking the Rich pensioners to return their Benefits if they feel they don’t need them .The Poorest have no choice whatsoever they are deducted at source by a Draconian implemented system ill thought out.
All the Top Politicians that have brain waves and have them contracted out because they haven’t a brain between them have cost this Country Billions in failed projects .Universal Credit is drastically over budget but we must continue paying the contractors or it falls down .Gullible incompetent and so quick to spend other people’s money that’s why the Country is in a mess not Welfare Benefits .
Cameron you have lost control the sooner you and your ilk go the better but let’s not rely on Labour either .www.brokenbritainundertories.com
I have just down sized from a 3 bed because of bedroom tax now I live in a 2 bed my son is coming up 16 when leaves home I have to move again I am single parent and had enough moving I work 25 hours a week I have been working for years when I am on my own i have to work 30 hours .at the moment I work as a person assistant I can’t get any more hours .so ether I have to get a second job pay. Extra tax .dont seem to have anything to look forward to I only earn 755.oo mounth so by the time I pay 430.00 rent 76.00 council tax gas electric will have nothing left as gas electric and petrol for work .