In hoping the benefits cap may prove to be A Good Thing?

[thepeoplesprincess]

In the long run. For private renters anyway.

As things currently stand, private landlords are getting away with charging extortionate rents that few can afford because the shortfall is made up by Housing Benefit. So if benefits are to be capped, landlords will (hopefully) be forced to lower their rents to affordable levels or sell up if they can't find tenants that can and will pay hundreds of pounds a month. Either will be great for the average Joe IMO.

gabid the average claimant doesn't get £26,000.

HTH.

NIl - read beyond that part - we went home to our own house when we were 12. We went to my grandparents when we were younger because it was beside our primary school - we could walk home there. Our secondary school was miles away so it didn't make much sense for us to go back there and have my parents come pick us up.

i dont understand why a non SN 12 year old cannot be left at home. my parents didnt fuss over me at that age & a friend whose mum did wished her mum would get a life & stop focussing on her too much.

And the amount is for a household, not an individual.

So feckless single bloke with no intention of ever working in his life, living on his own = not affected by cap.

His ex-wife and three children who fled his violent abuse, crammed in with her parents (one moderately disabled) = very likely to be affected by cap.

some children would probably benefit more from going to an after school club than having their parents look after them. if they were properly fed and could have help with their homework.

The proposal is that the second parent would have to work a minimum of 20 hours a week if they have children aged 12 and above - so we are not talking about the second parent being made to work long hours - although many actually already do.

I have 4 kids - all teenagers - and I work more than 20 hours a week - my DP works full time. And loads of my colleagues who work full time or nearly full time have kids, its really not that unusual. Most people rely on a range of options for care of their teenagers - being home alone, being with grandparents or friends or being at afterschool activities.

A 90 minute commute and 20 hours a week would mean a parent being out of the house for example from 9am to 4pm. Is this really going to traumatise a child? Really!!! If so my children are fucked.

Peachy so someone with a child on MR DLA would be expected to work!!
where the hell would they get child care.
dd is on HR but if she didn't have sleep problems she would be on MR.
where on earth would someone on NMW get affordable care?
she and young people like her couldn't just go to the local childminder.

some children would probably benefit more from going to an after school club than having their parents look after them. if they were properly fed and could have help with their homework.

I'm sure they would, but unless you're making the assumption that most benefit claimants are inadequate parents (which says more about you and your prejudices than it does about anything else), how is that relevant?

peachy - someone was saying that people with children shouldn't have to travel for 90 mins to a job because it would affect the child's development.

And yes I guess I am prejudiced against parents when i see their children playing in a busy road unsupervised (and they look about 4) or they are in a pushchair with their mother pushing them with a fag in their hands wafting spoke around their heads. If they are that lax in public, what are they like in private. I have no idea if they work or not.

I think some people have missed what I was worried about, having read the report I thought it was youngest child aged 5 - 12 = 20 hours for second parent, 12+ = 36 hours for second parent.

Plus room within the legislation (which is the other bit I'm worried about) to push the hours that must be worked by both parents all the way up to the working time directive - 48 hours, by as many jobs as nessessary and with a 90 min commute from home.

AND I KEEP TALKING ABOUT MORE THAN ONE COMMUTE!!!!!!!!!!

IF both parents have long commutes to make the hours up with two/three jobs and the jobs are within 90mins of home BUT across town from each other then is it possible there is a problem? With the job market the way it is at the moment I know too many single people working like this who are rarely at home to make this an impossible situation for people in low income insecure work. If they had kids there is a possibility that they wouldn't see them at all in the morning and not be in until 11 at night. 4 days out of 5.

To anyone who thinks I'm accusing you of harming your children or miraculosly making it through your childhood intact is this anything like your situation?

I guess I'm not thinking about having Grandparents nearby or other relatives/trusted people - which would make this not a great situation but workable. But then that's becasue all my family lived about 5 hours drive away when I was younger and I forget it's not the same for everyone else

I would probably have said that benefits were too high if it was more profitable to stay on them than take work.

BUT reading all this has been very interesting, I had no idea that so many people were in receipt of WTC for example.

Housing seems to be the critical issue - secure, affordable housing which enables families to live their lives with their support network - family, schools, doctor etc etc - around them. What is the point of moving them away from all that when there are unlikely to be any jobs in the cheaper areas anyway?

Where are the housing associations in all this? I thought they were almost quasi-council housing, ie providing affordable housing for people within communities?

oops forgot to say, I like the comment earlier about "when you snip one thread all the others start to unravel". the knock-on effects look likely to be disastrous.

Sevenfold- assume meant to work school hours; becuase of course jobs school hours and without holidays are easy to come by!

Even if ds1 was not violent (and as I said earlier, he ahd a go at nreaking my hand yesterday- granned fingers and twisted with all his body weight; I am no petite flower, if he does this to me well.....) there is no childcare available in our village that takes kids over 14 and only one aplce taking kids over 12 ewith a long wait of approaching a year for a palce, and several local aprents who would (IMO rightly) walk away if they knew ds1 was attending.

As for ds3 who does actually get MR atm (ds1 gets HR but will be reassessed soon and very few kids like him being allowed HR now) if tehre are more than 12 children in a room he shutds down entirely and becomes extremly distressed afterwarrds. Is this supposed to be an OK way to treat a severely disabled child now? (and he is severe, just sleeps between 11 and 6 on maybe a night or two a week which is enough for them to say middle rate)

And yes anyone equating benefits with neglect can sod right off; having worked in sector of child support (for a charity), been raised in a working but abusive family and now having my own family claiming some benefits- not true. I would never ever allow my boys to be neglected and certainly tehy never played out in roads- heck only one can play out at all, ds2, and he's 11 next week!

And having read the report I agree with what trickle says about the working hour requirements.

TheReal- perhaps wrt to 12 year olds, i don't have one who is not SN ATM but whilst I might leave ds2 at home for a little while, if I ahd to work 36 hours plus say a 90 minute commute it'd be around 4 hours alone five days week; taking into account when i would be able to drop off others and what time his school finishes.

If they said 20 hours with a 90 minute commute it's undoable; someone has to be here at 8.30 - 9.00 for ds3's SN Bus pick up and 3.00 - 3.30 for it's drop off. Our plan is Dh can largely work from home to manage that but we are fortunate to even be able to attempt that; most cannot (not least becuase most private leases ban it)

I wonder if 90 minute commute is allowed to include Bristol and a £6 bridge toll? Hmmm

Boschy the problem with Social housing from housing associations is that they don't get to choose who moves up the list into one of their properties and who is left lingering on a list in Private Housing or worse, with family or in temporary bedsit accommodation. Its the local council housing departments who decide and make up the rules, and my God do they make the most baffling rules ever known to man. If you own your home and are paying a mortgage, but one of you is made redundant/becomes sick and cannot work, and thus you lose your home, they class this as "intentionally" being homeless. As for those saying people should up sticks and move to where there is affordable housing- think again. Yet again, if these people go to the council for help, they will be classed as Intentionally homeless and told to go away for 6 months. I've also been told that, if you move to temporary accommodation, even if this means they can move you away from your current area-away from your child's school, your job, your GP etc, the council are happy to leave you there for as long as possible as again, you aren't classed as homeless. In Berkshire, if you are evicted through no fault of your own, you are forced to get your Landlord to first give you an eviction notice, then a court order than a bailiff order. Miss any of these out and you are, that's right, Intentionally Homeless. And when, finally, you get the final order, your points are revoked from you and you start again. You also, meanwhile, incur costs and not to mention animosity from your landlord.
They have a truly mind boggling points system in place, and, even if you cannot afford the rent on your home or are living in sub standard conditions, this makes no difference to them.
Councils sold off their properties to Housing associations, but unfortunately didn't also give them the rights to police who moves in, and also took away a prospective households chance of applying to several separate housing associations at the same time.

Dear god 20something I seriously dont know how people cope with that. but thank you for the info - I honestly thought housing associations were more um, useful, than what you have explained.

20something is right

i've seen people fall through the system- a family in temp accom (with 2 kids and the new baby brought 'home' to a one roomed flatlet in a unit shared with addicts where kitchen and loo facillities all shared) becuase when they got home from work one day to find a Bailiff there becuase their landlord had not paid mortgage they left,, thiniking they should- but as it wasn't the actual eviction, was serving of papers or somesuch, they were intentionally homless- tehy'd never missed a rent payment or anything. dad worked nights and could not sleep with the kids in the same room all day, and ended up getting sacked; have also seen people in B&Bs lose work becuase you ahve to be out between (typically) 9 and 6, so a few shifts and you are stuffed for a bed.

Then there was the single Mum removed from the list for refusing a property- a property next door to the parents of the bloke about to be released from prison for stabbing her and their daughter.

And my friend who did* get a house when her violent H was due to be relased from prison after a spell in for trafficking but 60 miles away so she ahd to apck in her job just to keep their daughters away from the man.

(* Friend got married to a lovely man on Christmas Ev who dotes on tehir girls, although ex is on the run after another conviction and she does live in fear)

Scary, isn't it?

we had polish tenants who left our rented house to move to a council house. They couldn't have been on the list for long as they'd only been in the country a couple of years. we were more than happy to continue renting to them as apart from the fact that we struggled to communicate they were excellent tenants. we were amazed - espec as we live in the south.

peachy - Most mortgage agreements ban working from home as well - with the exception of the odd bit of paperwork. This is why private landlords ban it, because their mortgage companies ban it.

Probably so Lesley; but regardless of who owns the house, LL or bank, silly barriers to economic productivity- aka working from home or for oneself- are surely going to need to go the way of the dinosaurs?

It's amazing how many times I have been told on here 'carer's Allowance is wrong, just work from home' oh if only! I'd LOVE to do some SN childcare once ds4 starts school this year. Not possible.

dreaming- points that giovern rapidity of move are allocated for lots of quite complex reasons so they would have been in receipt of extra points for some reason, even if unbeknown to you. Waiting lists also vary massively around the country.

Dreaming- that happens all the time here. We knew of a family on our street of Portuguese origin. Had been here 1 year, no children, all fully able to work. All got a very nice flat very quickly. Whereas on the flipside, a young family I also know has been on the same list for 2 years with little interest at all. I think some councils are given financial incentives to house immigrants and sadly, drug addicts too. Everyone else is left to fend for themselves.

I've moved from one private rented property to another, each one slowly worse than the last. I've been on the list for 4 years and not had even one offer. In fact, my local council removed us from the list for quite some time as I took my ex-Landlady to court as I had an accident in her property due to how badly constructed the stair case was. Despite the Environmental Health team from the same council backing me up, the Housing department didn't want to know. I was apparently a Bad tenant until I won my case. To me, it wasn't about the very small amount of compensation I got, it was having proof that I hadn't been a bad tenant! Every house we have had has been steadily more expensive, and everyone has got steadily worse. Landlords don't have any legislation and can do what they like. We just scrape our rent at the moment, but our current Landlord now wants us to move out as he wants to convert our house into bedsits which he can charge £400 PCM for, you could easily get 6 in with shared Kitchen and bathrooms. That leaves us in a position where we will have to move in with family as we simply cannot afford rents in our area privately.