The state benefits system mega-thread.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Hugh

So the tenants of those council houses bought them at a discount, and are then later letting them out - so one assumes they have moved out of the ex-council house into private accommodation, and are letting there previous (ex-council) house, making it available (which it wasn't when they lived there).

So there are swings and roundabouts - those ex-council houses are available to be rented, which they weren't before....

Not really Hugh. The available pool of housing hasn't changed, the only difference is that the taxpayer has just subsidised a private landlord to the tune of 5-6 figures, and is now paying for a private sector rent rather than a social one.

Without right to buy there would've been a house present either taken by an owner-occupier, with a property or chain becoming available, or bought at market rate by an investor who would then be renting it. When those people made their own subsidised by us property available to rent with the rent they receive subsidised by us, adding to the supply, they took another house out of the supply unless they left the country.

This is nearly always a zero sum game. In this case we, the taxpayer, get to subsidise a part of that game.

Personally, call me insane, I would rather there were no right to buy and councils were allowed to build houses, alongside our rating land by its utility rather than designations which would do far more to reduce our burgeoning housing benefit bill and mean we actually have state-owned assets rather than simply funding private landlords' portfolios.

This seems an awful lot to me like far more of a state benefit issue than most - this costs the taxpayer tens of thousands up front then an ongoing charge. Landlord benefit being added to with council tenant benefit.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by GrimUpNorth

If only the facts aggreed with you.

Attachment 25802

Attachment 25803

link to source - excel spreadsheet from the ONS website

The numbers seem pretty clear to me (despite the size of the attachments!).

Cheers

Grim

If only those facts were relevant to the discussion.

Those figures appear to relate simply to numbers of large families in the UK over the given period whereas I'm referring specifically to the number of problem families in which there is no parental control and children are being 'brought up' in squalor by defective parents. In problem families which are large, the problems are made worse and by definition the number of children adversely affected is greater hence the problem is likely to increase over time as those children have no positive roll models. That's not the same as saying that in the UK the number of large families will go up, but unless defective parenting is tackled I believe the proportion of problem families (large or small) is likely to go up.

You may have missed it or chosen to ignore it but I specifically pointed out that NOT all large families are a problem (far from it) and neither does being on benefits mean bad parents so let's just make that clear to save any further misunderstanding.

... Feckless parents who have kids then don't look after them. We're not talking here about people who fall ill or are subject to unforeseen circumstances after having children, but those who have children and keep on having them even when they can't cope and clearly don't even try.

[alferret]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Yup, being forced to sell off council houses at a discount is costing the taxpayer a fortune.

Many of these ex council houses are now being let out in the private rented sector, at a much higher cost to the Housing Benefit bill.

Really??? and your proof of this comes from where?
We brought our council house (as I no doubt a few members here did too) There are certain stipulations from the motgage provider & the council, and moving out and renting the property aint allowed, not for the first 5 years at least AFAIK.
They are not being forced to sell off housing stock, there are many criteria that needs to be met before the council will entertain the thought of right to buy.

Facts, if you dont have them (& not hearsay from red tops) you cant really comment.

FYI our house was valued at 71k, we got 9.5% off of the value as discount & still had to stump up 20% deposit.

Every property on our little bit of Mansfield is privately owned, we were the last ones to buy (out of the 16 properties) & not one is let out.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by alferret

Really??? and your proof of this comes from where?

Facts, if you dont have them (& not hearsay from red tops) you cant really comment.

Every property on our little bit of Mansfield is privately owned, we were the last ones to buy (out of the 16 properties) & not one is let out.

Well if all 16 properties in your street are owner-occupied this must mean not a single one of the millions sold nationwide is now rented out for sure.

Facts - sure!

Housing benefit bill in fiscal year 1978-1979 - £3.007 billion.
Housing benefit bill in fiscal year 2011/2012 - £23.384 billion.

Both inflation adjusted.

There was actually more housing benefit being paid out to people in work in 2011/12, £5.328 billion, than the entire pre-right to buy bill, even adjusting for inflation and population growth.

There is a case to be made that for every £1 of taxpayer money spent on housing benefit 95p of it is going on housing benefit, only 5p on building.

So yes, right to buy and the associated conditions are costing the taxpayer a bomb. No affordable housing to replace them is firing up the housing benefit bill and their ending up in the private sector is in its own right firing up the housing benefit bill as more and more have ended up in private rental not social rental.

Easy enough to find the statistics for this.

Between 2008-9 and 2012-13 the people in social rented housing dropped by 158,000.

In the same period the people in owner-occupied accommodation dropped by 284,000.

The equivalent of these and more into the private rented sector where, inevitably, we the taxpayer will be paying the higher rents, an increase of 889,000.

Still so long as the 16 properties in your little corner of Mansfield, having been fortunate enough to obtain social housing in the first place, now have your owner-occupied properties it's all good so clearly there's nothing wrong with the policy.

I mean who cares about our taxes propping up private landlords due to gutting of our public housing stock in the name of a 'property owning democracy', which as a dream has come crashing down as owner-occupancy rates are back to 1980s levels?

The two most disastrous decisions as far as housing in this country go in the past 35 years were both Tory decisions - right to buy and buy to let mortgages. These are of course closely followed by Brown's pensions raid. The only other thing going back further that really stands out is the Town and Country Planning Act. A law which has more place in a communist diktat than a democracy.

[Mr Angry]

Stop with the facts already.

[ianch99]

But aren't these housing schemes driven by political ideology and not what is in the best long term best interest of the country?

The Tory mantra since Thatcher came to power was "privatise and then let the market decide" and so, in this case as you have clearly and succinctly pointed out, the market has decided that the tax payer must pay more for housing the needy. I guess it is sort of obvious in hindsight: if you sell your housing stock at a loss and do not replace it, you then will have to pay the market rate when you need to source social housing. The market has no morality so you pay the going rate.

If the country votes for a party that puts profit above social responsibility then you do get what you pay for I suppose. I do include the previous quasi-Tory Labour government here.

[Ignitionnet]

Well this is nice.

As far as 'workfare' goes, the explanation for its existence is pretty simple.

Letter from Glen Watson, dated October 2012:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking whether the Office for National Statistics defines people in unpaid workfare-style programmes as being employed in its Labour Market Statistics. (124129)

The ONS collects information on people participating in government-supported employment and training programmes via the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The information includes the name of the programme and the type of activity being undertaken. Those participants whose activity comprises any form of work, work experience or work-related training are classified as in employment. This is regardless of whether the individual is paid or not.

Something to think about next time the government crow about how fabulous their 'recovery' is and discuss all the jobs they've created. Just don't look at what's happened to wages, the deficit due to low income tax receipts, or in-work welfare.

[Taf]

From personal experience I can tell you that a lot of these "training agencies" are nothing of the sort. They get large sums of cash to set up and operate them, but there appears to be no definition of what they should do with the "trainees" sent to them from the DWP.

Lots of paperwork by permanent staff who are only interested in their own existence, no incentives to do anything at all, and "trainees" who are often quite happy to be told to "go home and we'll see you in a few weeks' time".

And many of them get charity status so tax is avoidable!

Adult training in he UK is and has been for a longtime a joke good for nothing but putting taxpayers money into the hands of lousy bosses who do little or nothing to deserve or earn it. What is worse is that they prey on the enthusiasm of people to retrain and get back into a job and completely dishearten them and stiffle that enthusiasm after all if he company you've been sent to is doing nothing but abusing the system why shouldn't you. I'm not saying that attitude is right or acceptable but during my time trying to retrain it was an attitude i heard more and more as time and the trainee's understanding of what they were at a company for went on.

There is no political will to actually have a good training system in place or even bother too much that the one in place is little more then easy money for those companys that get the contracts as whilst on training your not "unemployed". Such a shame because it creates an atomosphere of do as little as possible and take the system for all it's worth and the vast majority of people that sign up for training are looking for exactly that training for new skills which will shorten at least their time on benefit. Also i don't know about elsewhere but in leicestershire the same people seem to be getting the contracts despite the numerous companys they have run\been a part of in the past that ended badly. Seems to be the case that if they are caught for something shut that company down start a new one and the contract drops straight back into their lap.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Taf

From personal experience I can tell you that a lot of these "training agencies" are nothing of the sort. They get large sums of cash to set up and operate them, but there appears to be no definition of what they should do with the "trainees" sent to them from the DWP.

Lots of paperwork by permanent staff who are only interested in their own existence, no incentives to do anything at all, and "trainees" who are often quite happy to be told to "go home and we'll see you in a few weeks' time".

And many of them get charity status so tax is avoidable!

Yup - I can't help thinking that as with many such schemes which start out well intentioned, there's a general lack of oversight and adequate performance measurement when it comes to outcomes. All too often it seems, the less scrupulous operators can easily create themselves a money making machine without really providing anything tangible. I dare say a large pinch of commercial naivety and short term political expediency added to the mix doesn't help.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Osem

Yup - I can't help thinking that as with many such schemes which start out well intentioned, there's a general lack of oversight and adequate performance measurement when it comes to outcomes. All too often it seems, the less scrupulous operators can easily create themselves a money making machine without really providing anything tangible. I dare say a large pinch of commercial naivety and short term political expediency added to the mix doesn't help.

You know, reading that and the first part of your signature you could easily be describing PFI with that statement. Incompetence in those matters appears to be something that applies to politicians generally rather than one party.

This scheme has the rather pleasing, for this government, effects of flattering them in terms of unemployment and keeping wages down by keeping the supply of labour higher at the low end.

It's a waste of taxpayer funds of course, but few politicians care about that when it comes to their own political interests.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

You know, reading that and the first part of your signature you could easily be describing PFI with that statement. Incompetence in those matters appears to be something that applies to politicians generally rather than one party.

This scheme has the rather pleasing, for this government, effects of flattering them in terms of unemployment and keeping wages down by keeping the supply of labour higher at the low end.

It's a waste of taxpayer funds of course, but few politicians care about that when it comes to their own political interests.

True and as I've stated several times, voting at the next election boils down to choosing the least worst option IMHO.

[Jimmy-J]

The best option for me is not to give any of them my vote.

Originally Posted by Jimmy-J

The best option for me is not to give any of them my vote.

If you don't vote, they win that way too...

[denphone]

l will be voting for the least worse option and that way at least l know my vote counts.....