Tory Government’s benefit cap is unlawful and causes 'real misery for no good purpose', High Court rules

[Skutterfly]

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/benefit-cap-judicial-review-welfare-payments-government-loses-lawsuit-court-case-judge-misery-a7802286.html

Finally

www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2015/research/corporate-welfare-state/

This is what people should be getting angry about, not a small number of people getting Housing Benefit and living in a nice area.

According to an article in The Guardian, around 80% of unemployment claims are short, and many are less than 6 months. To apply a cap means a family has potentially got to pay out to move, up root themselves or face rent/mortgage arrears when they could potentially find work in a couple of months. When people think of benefits, they seem to assume the Daily Fail scroungers rather than the reality.

Every area of the country needs a variety of workers from low paid to higher paid. It is nonsensical for everyone to be a higher paid worker, and where housing costs have risen then yes we do need to subsidise the costs or the economy will grind to a halt. For all those that say move, forget it costs to move, deposits, moving costs etc. Those may seem insignificant to those on a higher wage but to find deposits, moving costs when you are on unemployed benefits would be near on high impossible. (Also it is much easier to get a job in parts of SE/London where rents are expensive rather than other cheaper parts of the UK.) The one thing I don't think we have right is that you should always be better off in work including taking on more hours.

Finally please remember that we are all only one accident/redundancy/illness away from needing to claim ourselves. There are plenty of stories on here of people finding themselves on benefits who never thought they'd have to claim.

As well as more housing we also really need to break this mentality that everyone has to be in London.

We need to invest in the regions, spread out the jobs and opportunities more evenly, ease the to pressure on rents in London so its more likely that essential workers can afford to live there and stop this notion that everywhere outside London is a shitty depressed post industrial backwaters with no jobs, culture, opportunities etc.

It's not like that in a lot of places now and most low to average and even above average earners will have a much better quality of life in northern cities, where it is relatively affordable for people on nurses and teachers salaries to buy entire houses in nice areas within easy commuting distance of their workplace. Imagine that!

MsHoolies those figures are staggering. So much for a free market economy.

It basically affects some families in London. Hardly anyone outside of London is affected. And that is because of the high cost of rents.

Not just London. There are many areas in the south-east where a 3-bed house is almost impossible to find for less than £1,000.

Someone I know was homeless and the council placed her in a house leased from a private landlord at a rent of £228 pw. When the benefit cap came in she was left with £94 pw to pay all her bills including council tax, and feed and clothe herself and 3 kids.

Thankfully, she won her PIP appeal and the benefit cap no longer applies.

So any household with a salary of less than £20/£23k from full time work should have it topped up to at least the benefits level? Surely if such an income is not acceptable for those subject to the benefit cap then it is not acceptable to those in full time work either?

I'm glad.

And it is mostly centred on the cost of rent and council tax.

When ds was nearly 2 I became a single parent. I'd worked but needed to work a job that for around nursery. I worked 20 hours a week 5x4 hour shifts. Childcare was £20 a session so £100 a week - it was more than I earnt! I was 'lucky' then that shirt shifts around childcare still existed.
But I had my rent paid (£500 a month) and council tax (£70 a month) and also got 70% of childcare costs back through wtc.
I then got ctc and wtc based on my wages.

For anyone that thinks I was 'lucky' needs to live everyday aware that if the monetary support stopped you'd be fucked. Knowing you can only afford to feed and clothes your child thanks to government 'hand outs'

So I earnt 5500 a year. I got rent of 6000 and council tax of 700. The childcare was about 3500. That's 10k before you add the ctc and wtc.
If my rent was 1000 and council tax 100 as per some areas that's 12000 plus 1000. Capped at 23000 that would leave 10k a year to feed and clothe and pay utilities for the whole family. Ok - doable (just about£ for me as an adult and child but it's just a hand to mouth existence. Not a life.

I then got a FT 30 hours a week term time job which meant - again - childcare was more than my wage. I continued to work and continued to rely on tax credits.

Even now with my wage about 300 a month more due to working my way up and paying all my rent and CT myself (no childcare now) I still know I'm reliant on DLA and tax credits for providing for my son and me.

It's not nice. I'd LOVE to be self sufficient but wages vs cost of living just don't add up.

Oh, and despite raising a disabled child alone I have also done a degree to work towards self sufficiency. People don't necessarily want to be reliant and dependent on the state but sometimes it's necessary and it takes time to get out of it.

I moved over 10 times in my 20s and 30s, mostly for work. I paid a lot of rent on a low wage and some of the time I also had a long commute and travel expenses. I never considered it a bad thing, just something I needed to do to avoid ever having to claim benefits. I earn considerably less than the benefit cap now.

I do think we need a benefit system to support the vulnerable. But there needs to be a line drawn somewhere. As for in work benefits, employers should pay more and they're not going to do that with the system the way it is.

London is ridiculously overcrowded and other places are deserted of young people. That can't be right.

Mothertrucker you need to actually understand what you are bashing. It helps

Mother truck any working household ( with children) paying rents of £1000 a month and earning 20- 23k will receive top ups.

So basically more money going to private landlords who can raise the rent. Why not introduce rent caps so everyone can benefit from low rents rather than having one section of the population having their rent subsidised by landlord benefit?

X post.

Plenty of areas everywhere you can't get a 3 bed house for £1k rent. London isn't the only place that matters. Living in London or anywhere isn't a right. You go where the work is and where you can afford.

Hoards of us have had to move away from family and survived.If we all refused to move and demanded benefits to stay where we wanted the country would grind to a halt.

Could someone explain to me how a single parent on benefits can finance the move to a cheaper area?

I can't fathom how they could afford the fare from Bristol/Sussex/Gloucestershire to somewhere up north to even look at flats, let alone pay the moving costs. And how would they raise the money for rent in advance, deposit, agent's fees etc?

I just can't get my head round the practicalities of it.

When all the poor people are priced out of London are they going to ship them back in to clean their toilets or will keep just enough there for those jobs?

I just can't get my head round the practicalities of it. By budgeting and prioritising, like the rest of us.

You do realise that compared to other areas in the country the poorer areas of London aren't the poorest.

Other areas have low aspirations on top,higher poverty and none of the benefits of the SE as regards employment etc. People in these areas on low incomes travel elsewhere to work in more affluent areas. Why are Londoners incapable of doing the same?

Budgeting and prioritising - meaningless sound bites to any person who is already budgeted to their last pound.

"So any household with a salary of less than £20/£23k from full time work should have it topped up to at least the benefits level? Surely if such an income is not acceptable for those subject to the benefit cap then it is not acceptable to those in full time work either?"

Yes, which is why this gets more awful the more I understand about it, and why I didnt understand why a lower minimum wage was apparently fine, its because that minimum wage income level simply doesnt exist in reality.

Every increase in the minimum wage is endlessly debated and challenged and fought for in and against in parliament, but it seems thats almost pointless as there is this vast shadowy silent "supplement" system going on where the minimum wage is almost irrelevant in that it requires extra government subsidy to increase it to the point people can actually live on it.

Londoners with a better transport system and shorter distance.

Try getting to work with no car,a bus every hour if you're lucky and longer distances. Plenty do it on very low incomes.

Its like someone saying "I dont know why Im not losing weight, I only bought salad today!" while not mentioning that they also got a "working tax credit" buffet meal paid for by their parents.

I think people are confusing issues here. I do think it is entirely reasonable to house people out of London when there is am acute housing shortage. This decision should be made on basis of ties to the community. So someone who has lived in the borough for say 5 years at least would have priority over someone who has just turned up in the borough. This would ensure that someone who has fallen on hard times are still able to live within their community and have the local support of family and friends nearby. So someone who just appears in a London borough would not be given priority and would be housed outside of London. So for example, a family who just arrives from Syria or Eritrea should be housed outside London. They would not have the excuse of having children already enrolled and settled in schools or local ties and so anywhere in the UK is as good as any.

Iona I totally agree. So many people's idea of 'benefits claimants' is something like Wayne and Waynetta Slob. I and many of my friends have had periods of being unemployed. I'd say the average length of time was about 4 months. I also think that families on benefits would struggle to find the money that it actually costs to move - it's not cheap.

I would be interested to know how much money the Govt have saved by implementing the benefit cap. Has it even been worth it?