Jim Cunningham – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2014-04-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 2 April 2014, Official Report, column 724W, on housing benefit: social rented housing, if he will make an interim assessment of the effects of the under-occupancy penalty on rent arrears in the social rented sector in the first year of its introduction.

Esther McVey

We have already commissioned a two year evaluation of the effects of the removal of the spare room subsidy across Great Britain. The evaluation commenced in April 2013 and is being led by Ipsos-MORI and includes the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research. The final report will be published in late 2015.

Rent arrears can have multiple causes and levels tend to fluctuate over time. A longer time frame than one year is required in order to factor out short-term fluctuations and to see whether and to what extent the removal of the spare room subsidy has impacted on rent arrears levels.

There is some evidence that rent arrears levels are falling, as the Homes and Communities Agency reported in February 2014 that the median level of arrears among 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.