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Benefit Cap Timetable
Can anyone advise on the latest?
Its now showing as some time after April 2016 (phased basis) on most timetables.
This is from Entitled to:
From April 2016 the Benefit Cap will be set at:
•£442.31 a week if you are a couple or have children and live in London
•£384.62 a week if you are a couple or have children and live outside London
•£296.35 a week if you are a single person and live in London
•£257.69 a week if you are a single person and live outside London
Entitled to goes on to say ” If you are affected by the reduction in the Benefit Cap your Housing Benefit will be reduced at some point after April 2016. When this happens will depend on where you live and as yet no schedule has been released.”
For homelessness services these are massive challenges. If you have any inklings of what is going to happen I would be grateful.
Current draft of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill says:
Sections 7 and 8(1) to (6) come into force—
(a) for the purposes of making regulations, on the day on which this Act is passed;
(b) for remaining purposes, on such day or days as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint.
In other words it needs commencement order(s) and until they start appearing we are all guessing. The Bill is short and is making pretty speedy progress (House of Lords Report stage is next up) so it may well be passed in time for commencement of ss7 & 8 to roll out from April, but everyone seems to be assuming it will be put back to maybe October.
Thanking you kindly…......
From today’s rightsnet news ... Lord Freud confirms that benefit cap reductions to be introduced from autumn 2016
Lord Freud didn’t say when the new exemptions for carer’s allowance and guardian’s allowance recipients will come in ( I think they could do that bit now without waiting for royal assent for WRWB.) Has anyone got any clues about when they might start?
We have been told by DWP that the exemptions for carers entitled to CA will come in at the same time as the lowering of the benefit cap level, so no one on CA should be affected by the lowering of the cap.
Thanks, Eddy.
So not until the autumn then .. .and possibly at different times for the different LAs? Not ideal for (non-exempt) carers who are already hit by the cap.
Sorry for not replying Jon
Yes will be phased by LA area I believe, as the cap was itself.
Yes the people who are already affected are basically left as they are, which is most unsatisfactory given that there are many carers who should be getting DHP’s but don’t. Unfortunately the DWP wont budge.
Joe Halewood has posted that the DWP estimates of families affected might be wrong, following a FOI he concludes that the “real” figures might be three times higher than those given.
Joe has previous form on raising important HB issues, so it might be worth RN posters taking a look.
It is not clear from Joe’s post whether he has considered those exempt for other reasons such as receipt of WTC.