The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, presented her autumn budget to Parliament yesterday (Wednesday 26 November).
Some of the changes announced to welfare benefits were particularly welcome, namely the scrapping of the two-child benefits cap, which has the potential to significantly reduce child poverty, and the ending of a benefits anomaly that penalises people living in supported housing by leaving them financially disadvantaged when they start working.
The latter is something that affects many of our clients at BHT Sussex and, through our Make Work Pay for Everyone campaign, we have been working with partners and the Department for Work and Pensions to find a solution to this anomaly for more than two years.
This campaign success is great news, particularly for clients of our Accommodation for Work project which offers accommodation and support for people experiencing homelessness to get back into work.
The “cost of living” crisis continues and there were some steps taken in this budget to address this, for example, with reducing energy bills and raising the minimum wage.
BHT Sussex is proud to pay the real Living Wage as a minimum to all our staff.
Additional funding has also been announced to tackle poverty under the Warm Homes Plan and we will seek further funding through this scheme to help us improve the environmental efficiency of our properties.
The decision to keep local housing allowance frozen is disappointing, as is the fact that no new funding for supported housing has been announced, despite 1 in 3 supported housing providers closing schemes last year because of funding pressures.
However, we will continue to push for more investment in these lifeline services through our involvement in the national Save Our Supported Housing campaign.
We will be sharing more insights as to how the recent budget changes affect our clients, tenants and organisation over the coming weeks, including by taking a more detailed look at the successful Make Work Pay for Everyone campaign.
David Chaffey is the chief executive of BHT Sussex.
The homelessness charity Shelter were pretty scathing of the budget, and I find it shocking that the Labour government had the opportunity to scrap the cruel two-child benefit cap 16 months ago and they didn’t. Instead they chose to leave 1,000 children in poverty in Brighton and Hove alone (450,000 nationally).
They also had the gall to suspend the 7 Labour MPs who dared to speak out about the cruel policy back then. It’s incredible to see Labour councillors back slapping now and saying what a good thing it is the Chancellor scrapped this cruel poverty and hardship causing policy, and having amnesia that their Party doubled down and doggedly refused to scrap it just a short time ago. The same councillors didn’t stand in solidarity with their 7 suspended MP colleagues back then and have the courage to publicly tell their government the policy was cruel and should be scrapped.
They may have amnesia, but other people don’t.
Shelter’s budget comments were:
“Sarah Elliott, Chief Executive of Shelter, said: “This Budget is cold comfort to families on the brink of losing their home, or the record 172,400 children who will wake up homeless in temporary accommodation this Christmas.
“The Chancellor raised the scandal of children in damaging temporary accommodation, but the failure to unfreeze local housing allowance rates will condemn thousands to another grim winter without a secure home. Even more people will find it impossible to either avoid or escape homelessness in the months ahead unless the government throws them a lifeline.
“Housing benefit is meant to help struggling families afford a roof over their heads, but it’s too far out of sync with the real cost of renting. For the government’s upcoming homelessness strategy to help children out of temporary accommodation, it must do the right thing and unfreeze local housing allowance.”