Housing benefit strategy 'will need to be reviewed' after two years

The key plank of the government's housing benefit strategy – breaking the link between welfare increases and rises in rent – will need to be "reviewed" just two years after it is introduced because of concerns the poor will be priced out of more than a quarter of the country, according to a Commons committee report today. Ministers have proposed a radical shift in policy by 2013 linking rises in support for accommodation to consumer price inflation, which takes no account of housing costs. This in effect breaks the link between the help that tenants receive with their housing costs and the rent they actually pay. The work and pensions select committee, alarmed by predictions about the availability of private rented accommodation in certain localities that tenants may be able to secure at the new benefit levels, say this change would need to be reviewed before 2015. One study presented to MPs shows large swathes of southern England off-limits to many benefit claimants within 15 years. "This really is quite a change across the country and we question whether housing benefit should not rise with housing costs. Because within 15 years we see a possibility that accommodation will not be available to households regardless of their income," said Anne Begg, chair of the committee. Begg, Labour MP for Aberdeen South, also said that there are big concerns over homelessness, with Boris Johnson claiming that the housing benefit reforms would lead to a 50% increase in homelessness and 5,000 households in the capital "potentially being placed in temporary accommodation". She said the committee had worries about the lack of emphasis placed on disabled people or the elderly, which represent large groups of poor people affected by the changes. Ministers told the committee that such concerns were unfounded as they "failed to take into account how behaviour would be changed". Housing benefit provides means-tested state support for the housing costs of 4.8 million poor families – and will cost almost £22bn this year – a bill that ministers say needs to come down. "The government says landlords will change their behaviour by reducing rents and people will change behaviour by moving to cheaper accommodation. That's something we cannot test," said Begg,