to think that when there is a schools place crisis perhaps the government should think of ways to reduce birth rates?

[jellysandwich]

In my area (London) there is already a huge shortfall in places because there has been a baby boom. They are constantly opening new schools or creating bulge classes but this is often at the expense of other children who lose their playing fields and there is just not enough room in London to keep opening new schools and there is already a housing crisis because the country is so overcrowded.

I think perhaps it is time the government thought about limiting child related benefits to 2 children (which is the replacement rate) and those that want to have more can do so but not with taxpayers money. It would go some way to stopping some of the problems that rising birthrates create such as the school places crisis, overcrowding, pollution, increasing struggles for resources such as food and water and in an already overpopulated world I think the government is being negligent in not putting some sort of limit on child related benefits, especially when it seems to be counter-intuitive (if you work you don't get more money each time you have another child).

i don't live in the south. i live in a large midlands city, and my city is, IMO, very overcrowded

not sure what the solution is TBH :/

Enough to feed three children on maybe but not enough to lift them out of the poverty trap. Investing in children now means less adults and families to support in the future.

gets the popcorn out and makes herself comfortable

@catfromjapan - migration is NOT the msi cause of overpopulation. I think you'll find that 'indiginous' people having large families for benefit purposes is a contributory factor,as is the number of teenage pregnancies and older mothers. Also the fact that we have very good health care and are living longer.

Pisses me off when people try to blame all the social ills in this country on immigrants and 'foreigners'.

Maybe we should give CB for children 1 and 2, nothing for numbers three and four, and then start clawing it back in an 'excess child tax' from 5 onwards.

Angelos02 - i love ya! :-D i think that child free people should be be given a tax rebate.

Its a failure of planning and the population growing.

I think capping CB at 2 could cause problems as people would moan re not being able to have x children or a new family with a partner who already has two children. Would be far better to scrap CB and instead plough the money into schools and hospitals etc to cope. People are then free to have children but at their own expense and numbers would reduce themselves as less would have children knowing they didnt come with benefits.

@konnielingus- unless there had been a recent change,ALL parents are entitled to and recieve child benefit if they apply for it - regardless of their income.

I met quite a few trust fund babies and rich kids whilst living in SW london and they recieved it. It paid for their horse riding/ballet/acting lessons or it went into their savings accounts.

The problem is not enough schools though. Even in our area where classes are small schools have been closed and then whoops they're needed again. Its National and local gov who need to get their act together where planning is concerned. It isn't a case of family planning.
When your LEA seem surprised by the number of children needing school places in a particular year, there is something fundamentally wrong, irrespective of how many children there are.

anyway as for child related benefits such as child benefit and tax credits (ie benefits people get whether they are in work OR unemployed)- IMO the real problem is the extortionate cost of living ie housing / food / petrol / water / gas / electric. if these were affordable on minimum to average wages, there would be no need to pay benefits to people in work.

why are the powers that be not working to sort that out??

bit of a tangent i know but relevant i think

Ooh, I like "excess child tax", that'd learn 'em!!

@ HappyMummyOfOne "I think capping CB at 2 could cause problems as people would moan re not being able to have x children or a new family with a partner who already has two children."

As long as they can afford to have them without handouts, they can breed away!!

I really can't understand why people think that others should fund their liefstyles. If you were a Paraglider or Horse Racer I wouldn't be expected to fund your Equipment or Horsey - so why, just because you want to surround yourselves with kids, should money be diverted from better uses to allow you to do so?

And in this context, "better uses" is anything from potholes to the NHS - things that benefit us all as a collective.

Dysfunctionally.

Check your facts CB has changed and is now income based.its been a massive news item for the last 18 months.

And if you can produce one respected study that states people have children for benefit reasons I would be shocked given that the dwp confirms larger families (more than 3 kids) dependant solely on benefits are really quite unusual.

Ds2 is just about to start school. He got a place. In this 'baby boom year'. Which is the biggest yet. But has been steadily increasing every year.
So hardly a shock for the council's. And he was born nearly 5 years ago, so they have had 5 years to plan.
But they've done bugger all.
As they did the last 10 years, when birth rates have been steadily increasing.
And there has also been a huge migration.
Immigration is a problem.
but no government wants to deal with it.

= conclusion
= We are totally screwed.
What comforting thought.

Dysfuntionally, the latest statics show that our population is rising, firstly from people living longer and through once fatal illnesses ( dam those cancer etc survivors) and then from immigration.

There is no such thing as "government money", they are the safe keepers and policy makers that ensure we retain and improve the standard of living in the UK that we all should have.

Every country in the EU has to have a Welfare plan and follow a consistent model, our Government cannot, thankfully just pluck a scheme such as this out of thin air and implement it.

Research and previous attempts, doesn't back up that cutting benefits, without a certain level of employment that pays a living wage as a means to save the country money, it creates more problems that it helps( it actually doesn't help at all, as "those sort" of families will be catered for by SS, anyway.

Government's job is to manage services for the population it has, not engineer the population around the services it has.

Dysfunctionally have you been living in a cave? Lots of families have lost their CB since the rules changed last year.

It's not just the direct benefits though is it, it's getting more points towards being eligible for a bigger house, and it's deferring being expected to look for a job once your other children are at school.

By the way, Op, take comfort in the fact that I will NOT be having any more children. 2 is my lot.
So your Op is irrelevant to Me.
As it is to many people who have already had the said 2 children.

Pay as you go pensions are a ponzi scheme - quite literally. That is what we have all subscribed to for years. The basic idea being that the state pension is funded by current taxpayers. We depend upon there being enough current tax payers to fund our elderly people. Therefore we need lots of immigrants because the indigenous population is too niggardly with the number of children they will have. We will end up living in high rise flats with a population the size of china ....

Seriously unless someone stops the ponzi scheme, this is how it will end up ...

Jelly, birthrates is where the problem is - NOT ENOUGH.

I went to a conference where the speaker was Gavyn Davies when he was still at Goldman Sachs (before New Labour).

He was talking about grey power and how the ratio of old people would one day pass young people etc etc. So, even in the time of Mrs Thatcher they knew they had an increasingly ageing population.

And did absolutely nothing about it.

Now, why did the European Union encourage immigration? I had an interesting conversation with a German once. Watch the differing ideologies:

I said: the EU allowed mass immigration as a response to the declining birth rate of major Western countries.

The German said: no it isn't. It is because of the [post war] refugees act.

"comingalongnicely", most of what the NHS spends its funding on could be eradicated by everyone adopting a healthy lifestyle and abstaining from lots of things that are unnatural, unlike sex which is a human need.

The goverent should of started its inference at a time when we would all expect and demand that employers should pay a living wage, that is what created the problem, not people's natural want to have children.

If benefits are not paid at a liveable rate, then we pick up the bill in health, anti depresents for a start.

It's naive to think that the money saved by cutting Cb off at 2 children will be spent on improving the infrastructure of local communities unless it's in some kind of 'look at how we're cheering up the plebs' type of way, with bright colours and catchy phrases on the walls. (Cynical? Me?). When I was at high school many years ago the LA closed every single high school in the area, amalgamated some and reopened them all the following September. The actual figure escapes me but there were significantly less schools in the borough when they had finished. No new schools have been built since despite a population rise and a large number of new housing estates being built in the mean time.
The roads are full of potholes, libraries and Sure Start have had budgets cut to a minimum, the high street in the town is suffering badly and it is constantly featured in documentaries about payday lenders and in articles on the most deprived areas of England.
Despite this though they find the funds to out on a free festival and build a brand spangly new council office block...
If you think that by cutting CB this will change you are, quite frankly a fucking idiot.

PS the ultimate attack on the family unit, is capitalism. We have declined from the extended family communal system to a poor harried nuclear family, and even that is under strain.

Have you had a look at what jobs are out there subliminal? I can't gamble my family on zero hours and a pittance wage.