Single room rate for under 35 year olds

Can anyone tell me when the single room rate is going to become applicable for people upto age 35 as announced in spending review?

Can’t find a date for this change anywhere.

not sure i’ve seen an exact date (?) .....

.... but the main CSR doc says the measure will save nothing in 2011/2012, but £130m in 2012/2103 .... so perhaps april 2012?

I have it as April 2012, based on Table 3, page 12, Executive Summary, Spending Review 2010.
The note at the bottom says all measures start from the beginning of the financial year unless otherwise stated.
Hopefully I’ve interpretted this information correctly!

I’m sure there was something on R4 this morning about there being a delay but I was rushing about as usual so didn’t take much notice.

Quick look on www

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11858781

think the delay is about the cap and the 30th percentile stuff ...

... see today’s rightsnet news @  Housing benefit reforms delayed until January 2012 for existing claimants

Lol thanks Shawn - told you I wasn’t really listening. The edited version with the link shows that

Worth noting that there are certain DLA exceptions to the rule. From the equality impact assessment doc (http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sr2010_equalities.pdf):

2.20 The extension of the Single Room Rate to people aged 25-35 may affect people with mobility difficulties or low level care needs. Some mitigating action has been taken to protect disabled people, those on middle or higher rate of the care component of Disability Living Allowance are exempt from the measure

Thanks Steve

This thread has confused me.

The original plan was that this was coming into force in 2012 seperately from the other cuts. The cuts due to how LHA is assessed are April 2011 for new claimants and April 2012 for existing claimants.

Direct Gov gives the date as April 2012 for the single room rate. Though it isn’t clear whether that is up to date or just the announcement at the time.

There doesn’t seem to have been much about shared room rate in the news at rightsnet.

It’s going to be a change that will affect people hugely too - particularly as (in this area at least) the other LHA rates seem to be fairly realistic and the single room rate is an amount you can’t find anything for. Part of that is that single rooms generally include some bills, but even after you adjust for that it seems that a room just isn’t that mush cheaper than a studio or small one bedroom flat. It’s probably because some of the same properties are split to very small basic flats and bedsits, or to be rented as seperate rooms, and because where people take in lodgers they put a high price on giving up part of their space. The only way to get close would probably be to take a joint tenancy with other people with the same restriction, but the letting agents and landlords won’t be queueing up to offer tenancies on that basis, and it’s not a situation I’d recommend given the potential liabilitys if one flat sharer leaves, fails to pay or causes damage.

(It’s also a sore point. I’ll be 35 in April 2012, and I may not have a job after this April. April 2012 is certainly a preferable time for the change as far as I’m concerned !).

I’m also slightly confused by the idea of delaying the impact of the percentile change for existing claimants until April 2012 - I assumed that would just be automatically be dealt with as LHA is set for the next 12 months when the tenancy is signed, and as those periods ran out people would be changed to the new system. Are all existing claimants protected until 2012 then ?

That actually seems worse than allowing it to change more naturally with the 12 month periods. While people will get more money for longer it potentially puts a huge extra pressure on housing in April 2012 if everyone is affected at the same time. Which could drive up housing costs…

Victoria J