Social security spending out of control?

I don't think it is progress. I have read on mumsnet and in the press how life is so much better now whenever anyone suggests we return to how things used to be.

Yep, trend line would show increase.

What progress?

Check out Fig 2.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/august2025

Wages have gone up, but inflation has gone up faster.

Wages have stagnated over the last couple of decades.

Jobs used to pay enough. Progress hasn't helped many people.

But that causes inflation, both cost plus and demand pull. It's not that easy. Basic economics. Housing costs will rise if people could afford more. If wages increase, businesses will increase their prices to pay for it, thus reducing money in peoples' pockets.

Wages have risen over the past couple of decades. But costs have risen faster. Proves the point really.

Jobs need to pay more. A straightforward system.

Issue is that work does not always pay enough to live on.

And tax breaks to encourage people to have children, wouldn't better maternity care, maternity leave, paternity leave, flexible work, affordable childcare be more encouraging?

The word 'encourages' is part of the problem. You shouldn't have to be encouraged to work. It should be if you want money and have no additional means of income you need to work.

In Poland, for example, people get tax breaks for having kids, which encourages people to work in the UK

Fixed

The weekly benefit bashing post is back...

In reality the UK has some of the lowest pensions and benefits in Europe.

Many people who claim benegits are in work but paid poverty wages.

Benefit fraud levels are tiny based on the DWP own stats.

The employment market is dire at the moment and employers have no interest in giving jobs to people with disabilities or long term health conditions or older people.

That is the reality, not the Daily Mail propaganda...

So what do you want then? Starving pensioners?

Even those on £100000 per year salaries are only spending £42 per year of their tax bill on unemployment.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/news/britain-working-costing-calculate-pay-benefits-tax/

But in order for the person who cares to get Carer's Allowance, the person being cared for needs to be in receipt of a respective benefit.

I know that its just an experience BUT

My suggestion is that there are a lot of people with 'Treatable' conditions eg Mental Health, Muscular/Skeletal etc who are not well enough to work but not sick enough to get treated either.

So why are we not resourcing the NHS to deal with this?

Also what about retraining people who can no longer carry out their old jobs for medical reasons as happens in Germany?

Student accommodation isn't classified as short term lets

I did not mean to imply I believed otherwise. It's accommodation that isn't available to the general population in any case. The point of mentioning it was to emphasise that potential plots which could be used to build general residences for housing locals are invariably used to throw up more and more student accommodation, thereby exacerbating the pre-existing shortage of affordable options for renters.

I am very interested where exactly you live as I referenced earlier that Cornwall has 5% of all accommodation as holiday lets or second homes and this is judged as high

The 18% figure is the proportion of all rental properties which are STL, not just the proportion of all properties. The latter figure wouldn't really have any pertinence to this discussion because it's about rental prices, therefore it's only the rental market which has any real relevance.

HA rents are often effectively subsidised by the government. The cost of capital is rarely reflected in the rent charged and this gives people an artificial idea about what rents should be

This is all fair enough, but I initially pitched into this because of the claim that it's overly generous HB driving up rents, when that's self evidently not the case in my city because HB claimants can not afford private rents in any case, and by contrast, HA and LA rents remain an order of magnitude more affordable than those being charged for similar properties by private landlords.

Student accommodation isn't classified as short term lets. They may be used as short term lets in the summer but fundamentally the primary purpose of the accommodation is not to function as short term lets. It's like classifying someone's home that is rented out for summer on Air BNB as a short term lets when clearly that isn't it's primary use. Arguably the type of scenario you describe is actually an efficient use of accommodation and would actually increase supply of holiday accommodation in peak season which would suppress prices and lead to less regular housing stock being bought up for this purpose as the profit margins would be lower with so much competition.

I am very interested where exactly you live as I referenced earlier that Cornwall has 5% of all accommodation as holiday lets or second homes and this is judged as high. Unless you live in very specific suburbs of London I really doubt the 18% figure unless you have also included student accommodation.

I also think your last point about HA rents is naive. HA rents are often effectively subsidised by the government. The cost of capital is rarely reflected in the rent charged and this gives people an artificial idea about what rents should be. It's like comparing someone's mortgage payments with and without interest applied and then suggesting that the one not paying interest is paying the 'correct' amount.

Landlords selling up means more choice of available properties to buy. Especially good for 1st time buyers at the lower end of the market.

This makes absolutely no sense unless a huge percentage of the properties are being removed from the long term rental market and being turned into short term lets

Which is precisely what has been happening for years. It got to the point whereby legislation was passed in an attempt to bring about stricter licensing restrictions for STL purposes, and of course, the landlords immediately screamed blue murder and launched a legal challenge to the legislation. Fortunately they lost, but the private rental market is still completely out of the reach of typical residents.

What percentage of housing in your area is short term lets?

It's supposedly around 18-19%. This is exacerbated by the fact it's a university city, and over the past 10 years or so practically every plot which becomes available is bought up by developers for the purpose of throwing up yet more student blocks, which are then rented out during the academic year to students, and tourists across the peak June/July/August period.

It's just an easy target for people looking for easy answers

It's really not, which you can see quite clearly if you look at the ridiculous discrepancy in rents between similar privately owned and HA lets. HA one bedroom flat in a perfectly decent area will typically be around £500-600 per month. An almost identical privately owned let will be advertised at anywhere from £1500-2000 per month. Nobody on HB can even look at private let, not that landlords would consider them in any case, and precious few residents on typical salaries can afford that sort of rent in any case, which means they either have to spend a ridiculous proportion of their total income on housing, or live in bedsits in HMO's, or remain with parents into their 30s and 40s, at which point they might just, with significant parental assistance, be able to scrape together a mortgage deposit.

It was ever thus, i.e. greed etc. But today's market with holiday lets and Air BNBs is very different to the Brown years that started the house price inflation over the past 20 years. But the holiday let/Air BNB situation is also down to simple economics of supply and demand. There are clearly more and more people wanting short breaks/UK holidays etc, no doubt partly the cause of the demise of lots of hotels, guest houses, etc as people seem to have shifted away from hotels/guest houses into Air BNB and holiday lets. And of course, the massive increase in population that means more people not just wanting somewhere to live, but someone to holiday too!

This makes absolutely no sense unless a huge percentage of the properties are being removed from the long term rental market and being turned into short term lets.

Rents are generally set by supply and demand. This is true whether the property is owned by a corporate giant or a small time BTL landlord. They can't just charge whatever they fancy because they want to make up perceived lost profits from not being an Air BnB owner. Tenants would simply go elsewhere and rent more cheaply unless there is a shortage of supply. What percentage of housing in your area is short term lets?

Looking into this, even Cornwall only has 5% of it's housing stock as short term rentals or second homes. This silly isn't enough to cause rents to long term rents to spiral as it isn't enough to materially impact stock levels. It's just an easy target for people looking for easy answers.

Sellers don't prioritise future landlords when selling. A family can also offer on a property.

If enough people couldn't afford rents/food etc then prices WOULD come down

Well how do you reconcile this with the fact that in my city, private rental prices are totally unaffordable for most normal residents, and yet for years and years prices have just steadily increased?

It's because of benefits

Well no, because as I've already explained, benefits wouldn't cover rents in typical privately held tenancies here, so it's absolutely not a case of landlords milking the HB cow.