Cap on benefits to 26k- am I missing something?

[buggyRunner]

As far as I can gather it's the normal benefits ie housing/ cb and wtc. This seems like a large sum. Is it accross the board or does it include disability related benefits? Are the figures misleading?

Hunty
So it was NOT the 'rise' in housing benefit that pushed rent prices up. It was the fact that DEMAND for social housing outstripped the SUPPLY.if this was true due to the present slump in the housing market there will be many more properties being rented out as owners cannot sell , this will result in/will have resulted in a fall in rents but this has not happened due to subsidy by tax payer This, you have got the wrong end of the stick. Or don't know the subject matter on which you opine. SOCIAL HOUSING IS NOT owned by private people. SOCIAL HOUSING is the council and Housing Association properties. So who exactly is selling them? How can more SOCIAL HOUSING be rented out when the government isn't BUILDING any more?

If owners cannot sell their homes they will let them. This is happening in my area - it is a bad idea to leave a house empty. Landlords also let to HB tenants and the let, in some cases, is supervised by council staff. I was't referring to social housing. The demand for social housing has gone up because people are living longer and there are many more single parents, single people tan previously not just that houses are not being built.

The benefit system is unsustainable so needs cut back whether you or anyone else likes it or not. Labour chucked money around in the good times and we are now suffering the results. eg doctors get 70,000 pa pensions. That is 1.4 million over a low estimate of20 years retirement. All this has to be cut or we are up the swanny.

Because, while the HOUSING ASSOCIATION classes my home as a 3-bed, due to the square footage of it, the HOUSING BENEFIT DEPARTMENT only class it as a 2.5-bed, and as such will pay no more housing benefit than would be paid on a 2-bed house. HTH

That's quite an assertion Spike. Can you back it up? I wouldn't have said anywhere in the UK qualified as offering plenty of jobs at the moment, unless you're very well qualified in something there's demand for, but perhaps you can tell us more.

LilyBolero do you think people should move if they've not found work even if they move to somewhere where there's less chance of work? Because that's how it would be if they're living in London. The job market isn't equal all across the country. For most people, the chance of work is higher in London in the south east. Not everyone. If you're an Irish language teacher, a crofter, an oil rig worker, a sheep farmer, I fully accept you're better off in some of the cheaper areas of the country. But for most of us, London offers the best chance of employment. I'd have better employment options in my field if I moved to the south east.

So with that in mind, your suggestion only makes sense if you're saying that some people are unemployable, so they should be unemployable in the cheapest possible areas. I could understand that. It might make economic sense. Some people just aren't suitable for work. I've encountered plenty of people who I'd never employ, sometimes for reasons that seem to be their own fault and sometimes for reasons that aren't. But if you're not saying that, and you think moving the unemployed away from the job market isn't going to lower their chances of work and therefore cost the rest of us in JSA, then your point isn't very sensible.

"Said families have plenty of time to look for areas with low unemployment and move accordingly"

Can you please show where in the Country there are areas of high employment - and lots of vacancies, combined with low living costs please? I truly think that this would be of massive, massive help to lots of people, both here on MN and elsewhere.

(That sounds well snarky but I am honestly interested in finding out where this is the case)

Flangelina, i think what I'm saying is that if someone, living in an area of high employment, over a certain period of time, hasn't found work, then perhaps they are not going to. And perhaps moving could be beneficial.

And yy, I agree that some people are unemployable. Which may be saying the same thing.

Fwiw, I think that doing a certain level of voluntary work should count as work, so perhaps people doing a certain amount of unpaid work (10 hours? 16 hours?) could be protected too.

Out of curiosity, I stuck my family details into Entitledto...we exceed the benefit cap by £75 a week, and that's a couple with three kids (no DLA 'cos the bastards won't give us any, despite multiple and severe disabilities), living in the armpit of London (Croydon, for the curious).

DP is facing redundancy in the spring, and jobs in his chosen field are fast disappearing due to outsourcing to India and Korea. If he doesn't find work soon then our house will be repossessed and we'll probably end up squashed into a B&B in Hastings. We will have to rely on food and clothing banks as most of our UC will be taken to pay for the rent (rent in B&B typically £400/week).

But you will be exempt VeryLittle as newly unemployed and in danger of homelessness.

And presumably you could also look for a job in that eventuality?

I was hoping for rather more than simply a restatement of what you've already said, Spike. You probably don't live in the only town in the country with jobs, no, but you need to understand that as you live in the south east, your local job market is much better than in most places outside the south east- the cheaper places, basically. Of these four pages of jobs, how many do you think would be gettable for someone who's been out of the job market a while, even a few months? Which require specific and uncommon qualifications? How many do you think are real vacancies, and how many do you think are earmarked for an internal candidate but being advertised to comply with the law? How many guarantee a certain number of hours a week, making them feasible to take? You said there are lots of jobs, so I assume you've at least thought about this. Please also tell us about the housing opportunities and costs, and travel costs if you're expecting people to commute from within a particular radius.

Lastly, please let us all know where this land of milk and honey is. I'd hate to live in the SE myself, but the information will be useful to some. If you don't, people will think you're spouting hot air. If you do, fair play to you. You'd basically be saying to a lot of jobless outsiders 'come here, we've got plenty' and not many people would do that. It's very civic minded of you, seriously. Unfortunately though, there aren't enough jobs to go round, full stop, and the unemployed won't all be able to get trainee engineer jobs. I wish they could.

Porto VeryLittle No, the amendments to exempt the newly unemployed and those in danger of homelssness were both withdrawn.

also withdrawn was exemption for carers & kinship carers (those who foster relatives).

I'm afraid voluntary work is seen as less important than work-for-dole, LilyBolero.

As this woman discovered when she was told to give up her voluntary work serving her community at a local museum and go and stack shelves as free labour for Poundland. Who can use taxpayer-funded labour instead of paying actual wages to actual staff.

But I digress.

Porto

We would still end up in emergency B&B as there are not enough social housing landlords in Croydon (there's a shortfall of over 6000 houses)

With HB for a bedsit and all other benefits we'd get £409 a week...most of that would be taken to pay the B&B rent (£350-£400 a week).

So, once again, we'd be relying on charity in order to eat and be clothed.

Spike. How many jobs are there for someone who hasn't acheived a 'C' grade GCSE in Maths and English? Because even a basic 'shop job' asks for this as a minimum?

And, while I concede the point that it might make sense to make the totally 'unemployable' move to the cheaper areas - WHO gets to decide if you have a possibility of employment? And what about those people with disabilities? Should THEY move away from their support networks to a cheaper area?

And just FYI - The difference between Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA): ESA is an out-of-work benefit ONLY paid to those who have a VERY VERY limited capability for work OR NO possibility of EVER working. ESA is paid on the basis of employability due to disability. DLA is an in-work and out-of-work benefit, paid on the basis of care and mobility needs.

So a person could be classed as too disabled to work, and be in receipt of ESA, and not get DLA because their care needs were not great enough. DLA will be exempt from the cap - BUT ESA WON'T BE. So those people with disabilities that even the DWP class as too severe for them to work AT ALL...WILL STILL BE SUBJECT TO THE UC CAP.

And, I repeat my earlier comment on IDS saying that WTC will be exempt from the cap. It is a spin-doctor produced soundbite that has no meaning in the real world. Because when UC is brought in (and therefore the cap) in April 2013, WTC WILL CEASE TO EXIST. And prior WTC claimants will ALSO HAVE TO CLAIM UC AND BE SUBJECT TO THE CAP. Despite the fact that they work. And if they are on a zero-hours contract on NMW, and their hours over the previous 3 months to their transfer average out at 34 hours a week, rather than 35 hours a week - they will be classed as being 'unemployed' for the purposes of the cap. IDS's comment is designed to make people think that this will only affect the 'workshy'.

IMO, that will cause the amount of people OUT of work to increase, not DECREASE. I know of quite a lot of people that that WILL affect - one of my friend's husbands can work 50 hours one week, then 4 hours the following week. He won't be able to survive when UC ASSUMES that as he is 'employed', he is earning the equivalent of 35hrs@NMW EVERY week. So he will have to either find another job (HA) or give up work, or starve/become homeless.

OH - And there are LOTS of good reasons why someone might only be ABLE to work PT. People with mild disabilities, that don't qualify for ESA/DLA, but still have disabilities, for example.

Porto

WHAT JOBS?

There are 10 people chasing every vacancy

Spike are you going to answer any of my questions?

i checked the area where my family is from & there were hundred of jobs. lots of NMW.

also my cousins live there & always have jobs despite no qualifications. bar work, shop work etc.

NB: they get lots of family help with childcare which obviously makes a big difference.

The job pages in my local area have dropped to 1 page from about 5 or 6 a few years ago.

This week of that page there were quite a few "Want a job? Try working from home!" ones which, as most of us know, are either scams and or require a layout of capital.

There were a few part time jobs - bar work and the like, but not nearly enough to make it into one full time job which would earn enough to pay the rent required round here.

A few specialist ones - lab technicians, teachers.

And that was pretty much it. Oh, a few care worker ones.

As I said (can't remember if it was on this thread or another one) rent round here is about £800.00 for a 2 bed flat. I don't live in Central London.

I've got a job and I am grateful for that, but my company have been sailing close to the wind for the last couple of years - We are a small business and it could go pop at any moment. I could probably find something if this happened to me, but I've got to be honest, I'm getting older - why should employers employ me - a LP as opposed to a young school leaver with no responsibilites?

I'm fortunate that my circumstances would not result in me being forced onto benefits and possibly forced to move away from my Mum and friends - the only support I have in my life! But I can easily see how it could happen in the blink of an eye.

I'll answer.

When you've got on the phone/net and rang every single job agency,newspaper,website etc in the country and been told zero jobs,zero jobs continuously then come back and claim there is no work.

The above is what I and plenty of others would/do do if out of work.They wouldn't rest until they found something because they'd have no choice.They'd have to move anywhere.It's called living in the real world.

Also just because there are x amount of people on JSA doesn't mean to say there are no jobs.

2.685 million unemployed

DO you honestly think there are two million job vacanices in the UK?

no but there are 400,000.

i have been recruiting for a 35k job for 6 months & not had a good enough candidate yet.