The 'rooms' rules seem to be designed to just make life more difficult for people for no reason. I could understand it if it were just a flat rate and you could have as many bedrooms as you liked. So that if, for example (as does happen) someone chooses to live in a cheap flat in a grotty area in order to have a spare room (for, say, children that stay with them at the weekend or whatever) that costs as much as a nice flat without the spare room, they should to my mind be allowed to do that, as it isn't costing any more money. But our local council will penalise them for that. Also, the rules on reception rooms are all to cock here as well. You're allowed one reception room if there's two of you. However, in this area there are a lot of houses that are really quite small two-up two-downs where even though there are two reception rooms it's not a massive amount of space anyway. Again, people who live in these houses are being penalised, even though they cost the same in rent as say a new-build flat with one big single living area. And it leads to all kinds of stupid anomalies such as if someone is in a two-up two-down with the dividing wall knocked through, they will be entitled to more HB than someone living next-door who still has the two separate rooms. It's crackers.