and the Tories DARED to criticise Labour's record on child poverty....

[nearlytoolate]

Yes, Labour hadn't met their target on child poverty. Yes, the UK ranked poorly as a place to bring up children. But at least they HAD a child poverty target...

I'm so angry that ALL the cuts they have announced so far are aimed at children. I weep to think what we are doing to the next generation. They clearly couldn't give a f*.

I think we need to make a much stronger case for fairness for children - yes some families are comfortably off, but ALL families take an enormous financial hit in order to bring up their children. Whether this is reduced income, large childcare bills, as well as feeding, housing and doing our best to provide our children with good education and happy childhood experiences - if you have dependent children, probably pretty much all your disposable income goes on them, however much or little that is. and its right that this is recognised in the tax system - its about fairness across the lifecourse.

To pit rich and poor families against each other in some twisted definition of 'fairness' is to miss the point. What about the contribution from those without dependents? After all, everyone needs a future workforce, (especially if they are going to limit migrant labour...)

That's all I wanted to say. Rant over

Councils are responsible for housing families. Families will therefore not be wandering the streets with suitcases, looking for an empty property. If one borough can only secure accommodation that is too expensive (which is presumably how these situations arise), they will have to liaise with another borough to find something that complies with the new rules.... then offer it to the family who can then relocate.

I think this will go hand in hand with a more general assessment of the usage of public housing e.g. sole occupiers of large properties offered smaller accommodation.

There is never a situation where you get sole occupiers of large houses. The size depends on the number of people to be housed - 2 people per bedroom. As for coucils liaising, it would be an administrative nightmare, particularly as no council is going to welcome having more families added to their already overstretched lists.
There will be private landlords evicting families and no guarantee of any alternative accommodation being available to them. The whole thing hasn't been thought through and the Tories are ignoring the human misery it will create - 81,000 vulnerable families in London alone. We'll be back to the Eighties, where no one cares about people at the bottom of society falling through the net.

There are quite a lot of examples of under-occupancy of social housing. Ideas are already being put forward of reassessing housing needs on a more regular basis (every 5 or 10 years, for example) and ending the 'house for life' concept. I think it's all part of the same conversation.

If there is less housing benefit available then there will be a downward shift in rents. All those landlords won't suddenly find private tenants to replace tenants on housing benefit. So hopefully it will not necessarily mean people being made homeless. But it will mean fewer landlords profiting at the expense of the taxpayer.

Well, Chil1234 and Rene, I only wish I could be as optimistic as you - but there's an awful lot of supposition and wishful thinking in what you're saying. Pity the poor sods who are going to have to put your bright and breezy assumptions to the test.

Somewhere between our optimism and your pessimism will be the reality. :)

I really don't think 'poverty' is a term that can be applied to a situation where the parents of a child earn over £45,000 a year.

I don't think the way they are organising it is fair in terms of household vs personal income but aside from that, I don't see the problem with scrapping CB for higher earning households.

Their children will not suddenly descend into poverty without an extra few quid a week.

Speaking from the point of view of someone on benefits, probably amounting to about a third of the threshold? I have no idea how much we get. but I am certain we could and would manage if they decided to take away our child benefit.

Re the HB cap, they really ought to put a limit on rents at the same time, because the rental market is pretty much a law unto itself.

Someone up the road from us wanted to put their (albeit large) house up for something like £5,000 a month the other week...or so I am told. The agents laughed at them, true...but it is pretty ridiculous.

Well, there you go.

If there was a limit to how much houses could be rented out for, relative to size and possibly location, it would solve a lot of problems I think. Finding private rented accommodation is a joke, when you need to pay the rent with LHA or HB.

We waited and searched for roughly three years at our old address, to find somewhere that would accept it. There was one other place a year or so before this one, but it was something ridiculous like £750 a month and we;d have had to sub the rent from what else we had. Not feasible. We were offered a flat in a new development by the council, but that was a month or two into our last tenancy and we'd only just moved and couldn't afford to again so soon.

This place came up very cheap basically because it was a total pit. I actually contracted a superbug from this house, in the first couple of months. It was that bad.

But it was cheap!

Flightattendent, I don't think anyone on here has said that people on over £45k a year are living in poverty - we've been talking about the benefits cap.
Agree totally though that the problem is vastly inflated rents - these are a result of the ludicrous house prices we have in the UK. Buy-to-let landlords will be reluctant to reduce the rent they charge because they want to cover their mortgage payments (poor dears).
Sorry to hear about your superbug - that's horrible!

Thanks, Cinnamon - it was!

I was referring to the thread title with my comments.

I don't see what child poverty has to do with stopping CB for those definitely not in poverty, iyswim.

"If there was a limit to how much houses could be rented out for, relative to size and possibly location, it would solve a lot of problems I think. Finding private rented accommodation is a joke, when you need to pay the rent with LHA or HB."

There is, it's just REALLY high.

"There is never a situation where you get sole occupiers of large houses."

Can I just say cinnamon toast I can see 5 2-3 bedroom housing association houses from my window all under occupied by pensioners...dont ask me what the solution is at this point though as I dont have the stomach to turf them out to make way for families but I will not be signing petitions to keep them in when the HA raise the issue.

From a selfish point of view I dont want them to move as they all have really nice gardens and the HA roads with younger families in my area look dreadful.

But Purpleswan, housing associations aren't the same as LA houses - they provide not-for-profit social housing, for which people pay rent. Unless your pensioners are on housing benefit, they are paying it themselves.

Housing association rents are subsidised as well as being not for profit. Housing is allocated according to need. Makes sense that tenants' requirements should be reassessed from time to time so that the housing stock available is used to the best effect.