What does new benefits cap mean for private rental market?

The government has published figures that reveal the impact of its 15-month-old household benefits cap which restricts payments to £500 a week for a family and £350 a week for a single person. Claimants who receive more than these figures have the excess deducted off their Housing Benefit entitlement and this, while applying to social housing providers, is also impacting the private rented sector – which costs the government approximately £10 billion a year in Housing Benefit payments. The scale of the cap has been significant, the figures released this week show. So far some 58,700 households have been affected and most of these have been larger families living in high rent areas. Before the election the Coalition hailed the scheme a success, saying some 22,000 households “have moved into work, reduced their Housing Benefit claim or [are] no longer claiming Housing Benefit at all”. The new Conservative government promised to reduce the cap further in its manifesto from a family annual maximum of £26,000 to £23,000 and this measure, the Queen’s Speech revealed, is to be introduced during the first year of parliament. What wasn’t mentioned in the speech was the affect this is likely to have on the…

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