Forum Home → Discussion → Housing costs → Thread
LHA uprating, post-benefit freeze
LHA rates were frozen for 4 years, in the 2015 budget. When they are allowed to uprate, how will that happen? e.g.
- jump to whatever the relevant 30th percentile BMRA rent is in 2019/20?
- uprate capped at 1%, until it catches up with the 30th percentile (i.e. never, at least in our area)
- or is the link with real rent figures now broken, and they will just be subject to the same CPI uprating as other benefits?
We won’t know for about a year at least, but the link was already broken before the freeze: the last uprating was generally fixed to CPI (with some minor exceptions)
Thanks HBA, if I ever knew that I had forgotten it.
As I’m sure is true for much of the country, we’re at the stage mentioned in this CIH report for the example of Chesterfield, where nevermind renting at the bottom 25% of the market, for some size categories there just aren’t any properties available at all at the LHA rate.
In our district one factor leading to bigger shortfalls is the somewhat illogical way the boundaries of the BRMA have been drawn, but I guess that’s never going to be open to review now.
EDIT: and a new CIH report, which covers many of the issues I had been musing about, eg:
[ Edited: 29 Aug 2018 at 12:22 pm by Jon (CANY) ]If LHA rates are not fully revalued once the freeze ends, the index of private housing rental prices (IPHRP) is
more likely to be more effective at keeping LHA rates broadly aligned with local rents over the medium to long
term than CPI would be and so would be a better baseline for uprating.