Jim Cunningham – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2014-03-28.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons his Department has not published data on the effects of the under-occupancy penalty on the number of social housing tenants who have moved home or fallen into rent arrears.
Esther McVey
It is still too early in the policy’s lifetime to draw any firm conclusions as to its effect, including the number of tenants who have moved home. Rent arrears can have multiple causes and levels tend to fluctuate over time. A longer timeframe than one year is required in order to see whether and, if so, to what extent the removal of the spare room subsidy has impacted on rent arrears levels.
A consortium led by Ipsos-MORI and which includes the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research has been commissioned to carry out a two year monitoring of the effects of the removal of the spare room subsidy measure across Great Britain.
The Homes and Communities Agency reported in February that the median level of arrears among the larger housing associations had fallen from 4.1% in the second quarter of 2013-14 to 3.9% in the third quarter of 2013-14.
