Hugh that makes grim reading.
People without children dont get child benefit and child tax credit to fall back on.
The idea of housing benefits is to cover 'full' cost of rent assuming there is not excess income. If this is a deliberate change to force people to use other income to pay towards rent it is wrong based on past principles of social responsibility. Basically they want to take down "the cost of living" allocation of benefits but would have been too damaging politically so this was done by the back door instead. Government's getting very sly now days.
Local housing allowance is becoming more and more of a bad idea, housing benefit should have been kept with the simple change of a hard cap put in place to prevent people living in rich mansions. If the government doesnt want to pay out high private rents they can either regulate the rental market or build more council housing.
---------- Post added at 13:39 ---------- Previous post was at 13:19 ----------
just seen this on the bbc news website, another one that I didnt know about.
"From April 2012 the age threshold for the shared room rate will rise from 25 to 35"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11633163
That is quite a change, if I understand it right it means anyone under 35, will no longer get rent to cover a 1 bed flat they will be expected to live in shared accomodation. The tories understand very little, there is numerous research that shows young single childess adults are the most worst off financially in the country. The age discrimination should be removed not raised.