Now the Bedroom tax hits Domestic violence victims as 'panic rooms' are levied

[ttosca]

Terrified victims of domestic violence are being forced to pay the Bedroom Tax on “panic rooms” in their homes.

The ultra-secure spaces are only created by councils when tenants are known to be at real risk of attack from their brutal ex-partners.

Despite this, hundreds of women are now being told their potentially life-saving sanctuaries will cost them a chunk of their housing benefit.

The panic rooms – spare bedrooms with strong bolts on the doors and bars on the windows – are provided so women can flee there with their children if under attack. Many have a direct phone line to the police.

But data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that 281 ­households in these “sanctuary” schemes have been told to pay around £14 a week extra. The problem is worst in the north east of England where a quarter of homes with panic rooms have been hit with charges.

Campaigners are now calling for a change in the hated new regulations forced through by Tory Work And Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Polly Neate of Women’s Aid said: “The Bedroom Tax is putting women and children at risk. It took no note of the difficulties survivors of domestic violence face in moving and at a time when there is a severe lack of safe, smaller properties for them to move into.”

The controversial new charges are also hitting kidney dialysis patients who treat themselves at home, even though they save the NHS an average £15,000 a year by not going to hospital.

Nick Palmer of the National Kidney Federation, which is already dealing with dozens of such cases, said: “We are very disappointed these very vulnerable people, who often can’t work, are being penalised for saving the NHS a lot of money.

“Dialysis at home is very cost-­effective. And it’s not just the saving of time in hospital. There are reduced transport costs and less complications.”

Government ministers claim the charge will save £490million a year and free up badly-needed larger properties.But the new charge is hitting ­vulnerable people such as the disabled, who often need an extra room.

Anna Bird of the disability charity Scope said: “For the vast majority of disabled people these are not spare bedrooms, these are ­essential rooms. We’ve spoken to disabled people who aren’t able to share a specially-adapted bed with their partner so they sleep in a separate room.

“But they are being forced to move or find the extra cash they don’t have to pay their rent. Many are struggling to make ends meet and getting in debt just to pay for essentials.”

Two-thirds of households affected by the new tax cannot find the cash to pay their rent, according to the National Housing Federation.

In a survey of 183 housing associations the federation found 66 per cent of their residents affected were in arrears.

More than 522,000 people on housing benefit have had it reduced by an average of £14.50 a week .Another 92,000 had their benefits cut for having two “excess” bedrooms, losing around £23.43 a week.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/now-bedroom-tax-hits-domestic-3299992#ixzz2xOAJK9hT

I agree that for some public services universal provision is most efficiently provided by broad taxation. Namely, defence, police and justice.

basic and emergency healthcare provision (arguably). Everything else though social housing and the like..........

Everything PartialFancy said.

I can't believe it's the 21st Century and some people are still arguing that charity should replace social security.

The Department for Education had this great idea in relation to provision for special educational needs when it produced its Green Paper around three years ago - get various charities to sort out all the assessments and do the work. They even named some of the candidate charities. Only they'd forgotten to ask the charities themselves, all of which, when they'd finished spluttering, told them they must be joking, they couldn't keep up with their current workload, and it was totally impractical anyway. When they finally produced the new legislation that proposal had been quietly dropped.

It's coming to something when even the government is fractionally more realistic than posters on MN.

If someones life is in such danger that they have had a reinforced safety room built into their home, then how the hell can we begrudge them the £14 per week. They should not expect to pay it.

Fgs id pay £14 not to need a panic room.

social security took over from charities (friendly societies, mutuals, and the like)

Most people would acknowledge that the government is sh!t at most things. We need to seperate the provision of service, with the funding of service. Following the logic on here, why bother at all with charities? Women's Aid should be replaced by the state, as should Save the Children, Childline, etc., etc.

Women's aid would have to be a lot bigger and would need a lot more chariatble donations if it couldn't in most cases signpost to government services.

What would you like to happen when there is a gap between chariatable provision and need for external support? Back to poor laws and workhouses? Families living under bridges (would effect your living space I suspect)?

"Most people would acknowledge that the government is sh!t at most things"

Nope. That's a purely idealogical standpoint of yours.

Government is actually good at a lot of things, although one should never stop looking for improvements. Even where govt's mediocre, it doesn't follow that not-government will do things better for better value.

And yes, where they're providing essential services, charities should be made redundant by the state.

Have you noticed we don't have Oxfam working in this country? Or charitable foundation hospitals - a big feature some places I've lived. Because those needs are already being met through, oh, broad-based mandatory taxation.

Because those needs are already being met through, oh, broad-based mandatory taxation.

Yes, not particualrly effectively. Certainly not in the realms of education and health. Not in comparison to other developed nations.

All of the really good hospitals were charitable foundation hospitals (Guys, Gt Ormond Street, and the like). The NHS has a near monopoly now.

It's not just my idealogical standpoint. Plenty of people share the view.

Why mandotary taxation rather than charity. Do you not trust people to do the right thing?

And if they were being met effectively before, why did anyone ever bother to found the NHS. Not to mention that if all demand is met well then doing things through charity costs the country more in total.

The US spends more per head of total population on medicare (which only serves the poor and other vunerable groups) than we spend on the NHS. What about areas which aren't in central London and have no history of affording charitable hospitals?

That's my point exactly, contrarian.

When the state took over provision of healthcare and made it universal, it also took on the formerly charitable institutions, making the charitable bit redundant.

And yes, it's nice to still do charitable stuff for optional extras - play workers on the children's wards, facilities for families.

I understand, but to follow your argument through, charities like Save the Children, Women's Aid, etc. shouldn't exist. If the State was doing a good job, then these charities (and private hospitals/schools) wouldn't exist.

No-one is ever going to get a consensus on what should be funded collectively. For those things which there isn't general support for, individuals and groups found and support charitable institutions.

That charities add to universal state provision doesn't mean the latter is a bad thing.

Correct. Where the state does a good job, charities for essentials don't exist.

The less good a job the state does and the more services it cuts, the more charities for essentials will exist. Although they may not be able (or willing) to meet the need. Foodbanks are an object example right now.

Charities are nice add-ons, for things that don't have general support and aren't public goods.

Oh hang on, are you trying to argue that a state is incapable of providing public services like education and healthcare and protecting people from domestic abuse? Rather than choosing not to?

The evidence doesn't support that, does it?

It's particularly obvious wrt to domestic violence, where the more the police and housing agencies and welfare state step up to the mark, the less work is needed by WA. The converse being also painfully true.

It's difficult to say if it's 'unwilling' or 'unable' (I suspect the latter).

I agree that charities providing additional services is no bad thing; however, we've all seen those childline and save the children ads "Little Gemma's step dad likes to touch her" (you know the sort of thing).

These are charitable appeals. If charities are required to keep kids safe to that extent, or to fund desparately needed research into killer diseases, then we're in trouble.

Unwilling or unable to do what?

Provide education and healthcare?

The state very clearly does both in the UK, including Oxford, Cambridge and an NHS which provides everything from vaccines to heart-lung transplants.

There are some people (yourself?) who like to restrict or cut funding to the NHS - and then whilne it isn't delivering as much.

But that's a function of the amount we choose to spend. Not of the fact that it's a state organisation.

You need to draw the distinction between 'funding' and 'doing'. Oxford and Cambridge aren't State Run institutions.

The fact is and remains that far from being the envy of the world, our health system is about to collapse under its own weight. We've seen massive real-terms increases in NHS funding, but without necessarily a corresponding improvement in outcomes. I'm not against the NHS, I just think we should be prepared to explore different way of doing things.

The problem is that the government has finite resources. We need to really examine what we want and expect from the State. Maintaining panic rooms for those that need them, mihght mean that there's less to spend on cancer treatments, or the military, or the police....

No, there's nothing structural about the NHS that make it "about to collapse under its own weight".

It struggles to keep up with the ageing population and the increased costs that arise from being able to do more medically. And it struggles when councils cut care services that would keep the vulnerable out of hospital.

But that's all about funding. As you say, we choose to spend only so much on health.

It's not about structure or being run by the state. In fact, the current restructuring & privatisation of the NHS will make it vastly less efficient and probably less effective. Fragmentation means huge amounts of work just communicating (and billing!) between the bits. The loss of purchasing power and economies of scale will mean paying more to suppliers. Extraction of profit will mean less money spent on patients. Public health functions didn't even appear in the first sketch of the privatised NHS - I think they've now been bolted on as an afterthought.

Anyway, you go right ahead and hold up the NHS as an icon of the state's intrinisic inability to provide services...

Look, we need to measure outcomes. The NHS does some things well, and some things less well. The reasons for the NHS being in the state it is are many and varied. You contend that it's not a structural issue (I believe that it is) but in actual fact, it really doesn't matter.

Bringing it back (sort of) to the original issue: What would you not do? Or would you propose to collect more in the way of tax? something that there isn't really the political will to do

If Ms. A. needs a panic room becasue she has a violent ex-partner, Does Ms. B. continue to live in cramped and overcrowded conditions, Does Ms. C. have to move to a new town away from her support network?

the government has difficult choices to make (on our behalf). I'm sure they'd love to be able to give everyone everything, but it can't be done.

Just out of interest; what do you believe that the State does well?

by the way, I hate talking the country down, but I know we can do better

Your sudden interest in the welfare of Ms B and Ms C is touching.

It's also a false choice.

The real choice is, if you're a council allowing re/development of land, do you:

a) sell it to a developer, who will extract a profit and sell it to Buy-To-Letters, who will extract another profit, or

b) cut out both middlemen and extract the profit yourselves. As a bonus, you also have control of your housing stock, allowing for efficiency and planning. You can even choose to meet some of your objectives as a council by setting lower rents, especially for eg key workers.

The answer for anyone who can do the sums is (b), and councils have indeed done this for decades. In fact, it's so obviously the right answer that they only stopped doing this when Mrs T (IIRC) passed a law that prevented councils directly building new houses - and creamed off some of the profit to the Treasury.

Did you know that, even after all the sell-offs, proper council housing still turns a profit in this country, and the Treasury is still raking off income from it?

It's not really a sudden interest. I was merely illustrating the point that the government can't do everything its people might wish it to do.

Let's not forget that in scenario "A" the developer and BTL investors will be subject to tax (which I'd increase in the case ofg BTL) which goes back into the public purse. Also, there would be an initial capital receipt which is missing in "B"

Option "B" (to me at least) is wrought with danger. Selling off council housing didn't change the dynamic in terms of the shortage of supply. My parents bought their council house. Had they not, they'd still be living in it as tenants. I'm not even convinced that the State should be responsible for housing anyone - excepting perhaps the properly disabled.

My parents refused to buy their council house, because when they die they want it to be rented to someone who needs it.

The Bedroom Tax is simply a way for the Government to save money. They don't care about the real issues it causes. Such as Dialysis patients having to pay for a "spare" bedroom that houses their dialysis machine. As long as they can reduce housing benefit, that is all they care about.