Drinkers lose share of housing benefit
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Edinburgh City Council is the first in the country to assess how much people spend on ‘luxuries’ such as alcohol and cigarettes when deciding whether to give them extra funding to cope with the cut to their benefits created by the spare room subsidy – dubbed the bedroom tax.
In application forms for the extra funds, people are asked to detail what they spend their money on, and in Edinburgh this includes alcohol. The council then takes this into account to decide who gets discretionary housing payments (DHP).
Since the spare room subsidy was introduced thousands of families have seen their benefits cut if they have an extra room in their home, leading to an increase of 13,000 requests for DHP in the last year.
Cammy Day, vice-convenor of the health, wellbeing and housing committee at Edinburgh council, said he was “not comfortable” with the policy but said the council had to introduce the measure to ensure its allocation of the fund didn’t disappear as demand continued to increase.
He told Inside Housing magazine: “As a result of a policy imposed by the Conservative Party, we are having to do this, otherwise our entire DHP allocation would have been spent in the first three months [of the financial year].”
Edinburgh City Council is the first in the country to assess how much people spend on ‘luxuries’ such as alcohol and cigarettes when deciding whether to give them extra funding to cope with the cut to their benefits created by the spare room subsidy – dubbed the bedroom tax.
In application forms for the extra funds, people are asked to detail what they spend their money on, and in Edinburgh this includes alcohol. The council then takes this into account to decide who gets discretionary housing payments (DHP).
Since the spare room subsidy was introduced thousands of families have seen their benefits cut if they have an extra room in their home, leading to an increase of 13,000 requests for DHP in the last year.
Cammy Day, vice-convenor of the health, wellbeing and housing committee at Edinburgh council, said he was “not comfortable” with the policy but said the council had to introduce the measure to ensure its allocation of the fund didn’t disappear as demand continued to increase.
He told Inside Housing magazine: “As a result of a policy imposed by the Conservative Party, we are having to do this, otherwise our entire DHP allocation would have been spent in the first three months [of the financial year].”
