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?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

They tried this in the 60s. They put them on coaches and sent them to seaside towns.

That worked.

My dps family live in London,we'll never be able to live there.

I had a forces childhood(father earning far less than this figure quoted I'm sure),moved every 1 0r 2 years-I along with every other forces child coped and survived.

It worked in the fifties. Places like Stevenage, Milton Keynes and the Garden Cities. (Not exactly the seaside, I'll grant you) Designed and built for people escaping London bomb-damage and slums. Very successful.

What's the equivalent of 35k mrsheffley?

I would vote in favour of it, I have never had a very high opinion on Lord Ashdown.

Hully, it is not the governments or the taxpayers responsibility to pay for people to have social networks and family support.

Individuals need to take more responsibility for themselves, and that is what this reform is encouraging.

I'm sorry, I am too angry to be polite any more.

You are buying their shit wholesale. How they laugh in their gilded throne rooms.

It worked in the 50s BECAUSE the garden cities were designed and built for people escaping war-ravaged London. What the OP is saying is that there doesn't appear to be an equivalent being designed and built now.

Also, as someone who has escaped London's expensive housing to a different city, we have had to think about moving back to the southEast because of a lack of working opportunities here. However, even to live in a not-terribly nice bit of Hertfordshire (compared to where we live now) we would have to pay an equivalent of a second mortgage for one annual commuter pass. So if we were both working in London, we would be paying an equivalent of 3 mortgages to live inside or around the M25.

Plus, unlike when we lived in central London, it would be harder to exist without a car, plus child care would be expensive as we'd have to add in an hour either side of our working days to allow for commuting time.

For us, cheaper to live outside London in a nice area where we have lots of support and informal childcare help, and to work more sporadically.

London has this huge gravitational field and it pushes prices up for miles and miles around, you have to get well out of town to get away from it, and the work opportunities get less and less....

Rents in extremely well-to-do areas of London (Kensington, parts of Islington, Notting Hill) are sky-high. DH and I work in Central London - me in the City, him in Westminster. We can't afford to live in Zone 1 or 2 so we commute, like millions of others have to. DH cycles to work (round trip of about 20 miles a day), I get the tube. It would be great if I could live in a massive house in Highgate or Hampstead and have my rent paid for me, but I can't - I have to work long hours, try and get up the career ladder and go from there. Why is it that other people can't take this course of action and help themselves?

I'm glad IDS is taking this approach and dealing with this - I moved schools as a child, DD has moved schools and when I was a single parent, I moved home 5 times with DD across England, trying to better myself, get my degree, get a good job and provide for DD and I.

I'm not buying anyone's shit, I'm capable of coming up with my perfectly valid opinion all by myself. It is wrong that people on out of work benefits can live a better lifestyle on the back of the state while people who work struggle ore than they do.

I really can't see how any rational person can't see that very basic thing.

Yes there might be problems for people if benefits get capped, but it seems to me that those problems would affect people who had more children than they could afford, therefore it is a problem of their own making. Life happens and people can find themselves with three children needing benefits, and that's fine. Give them what they need to live on. But don't give them more than they would get if the parents were working.

This isn't about taking the safety net of benefits away, it's about making them an unattractive lifestyle choice and giving people an incentive to work.

Unemployed families seeking work may well need to be near family and friends as it's the only way they have a hope in hell of accessing childcare. It's not about making sure that Joe and Jane Bloggs are near enough to be able to visit the grandparents at the weekend.

I suspect this idiotic scheme will ultimately cost far more than it saves. In our local area there is a major shortfall in the amount of school places available for primary school-aged children. And this is the kind of area where people affected by this policy will end up moving to.

Piece here arguing that in fact this will be bad for stable families on low incomes.

I'm inclined to agree that a better solution would be a rent cap, in that the major undeserving beneficiaries of the current benefits system are buy-to-rent landlords. Can't see this government going for that in a million years though.

And just for some context, the article above says the savings from this will be £270 million. Vodaphone got let off £6 billion in tax.

Can anyone tell me the average price to rent a three bed house in london? Because housing benefit is taken into account too . Not suggesting it shouldnt be , just that as there is so little council housing stock left , we are now paying for people to live in private sector properties .

The problem here has fuck all to do with benefits claimants living the life of riley at our expense, and everything to do with impossibly high housing costs particularly in the South East.

This cap solves nothing and causes a whole set of new problems both for the claimants themselves and for the local authorities where they end up being rehoused and reschooled. But of course it looks good on the front page of the Daily Mail.

Good posts Freckle and Iuse.

As a country we have to stop this continual reliance on the state some families engage in generation after generation. This is a jolly good compromise.

The government THEMSELVES acknowledged that it will cost MORTE to make people homeless and relocate them than to keep them where they are.

It is political and ideological. It has nothing to do with "encouraging people into work."

If they want to encourage people into work, how about creating some jobs with all the time energy and money spent on ruining their lives?

Frumpet - not sure there is any such thing as an 'average' three bedroom house in London. If you look at Notting Hill, Kensinton etc, then a three bedroom house would set you back at least £1000 per week. If you look somewhere like Croydon, then it may be around £250 - £300 per week. Each area of course has nice parts and less nice parts. Rents vary massively.

Whats going to happen to all the accomadation they have built for the olympics ? wouldnt it be a good idea to turn it into social housing ?

Many people have to live in these same areas on equivalent salaries with added costs of higher rent/mortgage,childcare and commuting costs.Not all families living and working in these areas are on banker salaries.They manage because they have to.

Well it's good anyway that the "why should the scroungers live in a nicer area than me when I have to commute from zone 6" brigade are supportive of this measure, given that said scroungers will likely soon be your neighbours, and their children squeezed into your children's classes. I trust they will be welcomed with open arms.

I very much doubt it.London is soooo expensive we can't even live on the outskirts.Dp has resigned himself to never living near his family,many have to.

Also away from London children of all backgrounds mix quite happily in classes,they certainly do at my dc's school.

I live in zone 1 and according to right move you can rent a 3 bedroom flat for £400 per week. or you can pay up to a whopping £8k per week.

about 25% of the available properties are < £500 pw.

I am with Zepherine.

This has nothing to do with "long term unemployed" - and there are more of them since the [[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/number-of-longterm-unemployed-doubles-2345521.html start of the recession] but even then it is a relatively small number. 400 000 and 100 0000 of them are over 50 years old.

It is a disaster waiting to happen.

Where are these houses where those who live in luxury for nothing? Yes, there are oddities, where a family is living in a house in Kensington subsidised by the tax payer, but this is an absolute exception.

The rule is that people who are on low wages - most of the recipients of HB are working - are living in expensive but often substandard accommodation.

I think someone linked to the Guardian article earlier. Where a family with kids would get less than a couple alone, even if the family were working.

Wages in UK are ridiculously low.

Where is this country where rents are low and salaries high enough?