The charity Shelter who represents the views and interests of tenants has never been a fan of the LHA. They have released a report that show that a quarter of tenants have fallen behind on their rental payments.
The government have finally woken up to the concept that they may have got it wrong!
What do they do? They issue a consultation paper to ask people what they think?
Have they not heard the chorus of concern by industry experts and landlords since they originally trialed the LHA telling them getting rid of direct payments would simply not work for a significant minority of tenants.
My plee to government - if you ask for views - this time can you listen rather than trying to ramm through your ideological and dogmatic policy at any costs. Lets get real.....for a change.
Shelter's Director of Policy and Campaigns, Kay Boycott, said: "LHA was intended to introduce desperately needed reform to housing benefit. While we support the original principles of the system, LHA is currently failing tenants and landlords. Our research shows the government must make urgent changes to LHA to ensure claimants do not continue to be disadvantaged."
Landlord insurance - where do professional landlords go?
We here at the NLA it is going to be a busy start to the new year when it comes to LHA:
ReplyDelete1) We have a parliamentary select committee looking at LHA with evidence sessions likely in mid-January (we've already provided written evidence which is viewable on the select committee website - http://bit.ly/7Cau0L);
2) The Department for Work and Pensions is also conducting its two-year review of how LHA has worked, which we are providing extensive views;
3) And, of course, this Government consultation (which has been a long time coming...) on Housing Benefit.
We are looking very closely at this consultation and welcome any views that landlords want to share on it.
The bottom line has to be (and Shelter, Crisis and most other housing organisations agree with us on this) that tenants deserve the choice of where they want their LHA paid to.
Look forward to hearing from other landlords on this!