Housing charity Shelter has warned that Government proposals to cut housing benefit will leave 134,000 British households homeless when they are introduced next year.
Nowhere is the threat of eviction more acute than in the capital. London Councils, the body which represents the capital’s 33 local authorities, says 82,000 London households will be at risk of losing their homes.
The council accused of leading the charge against the disabled, people caring for a relative or the hard-working low-paid – just one in eight housing benefit claimants in London is actually unemployed – is Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, much admired by Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Tory council’s own estimate is that 1,300 residents will be at risk of losing their homes. The National Housing Federation suggests many more people will be affected.
The cuts will impact significantly on the social demography of an area where the council has already been accused of using housing policy to gerrymander the borough to the advantage of the Conservative Party.
At a meeting of the council’s housing committee last week Conservative chair Andrew Johnson admitted that the cuts present the biggest challenge he has had to deal with, but offered no more than an interim report.
Labour group leader Stephen Cowan said that indicated Hammersmith and Fulham’s lack of interest in and readiness to deal with the likely outcome of the planned cuts. According to Shelter, Hammersmith and Fulha, will be the tenth worst affected local authority in the country. Families in a three-bedroom property will be £204 a month worse off.
Meanwhile, research from the Department of Work and Pensions indicates that 100 per cent of residents who receive any form of housing benefit will lose out in the borough. Hundreds of households could be evicted with many becoming homeless.
Since 2006, when Hammersmith and Fulham promised to cut council tax while radically reducing services, Cameron has identified himself with the council’s radical approach to innovation and cost-cutting, citing it as “a model of compassionate Conservatism”.
However, anti-poverty campaigners working in the borough have warned that it “presents a chilling vision of Britain under the Tories”.
