DWP research study - removal of spare room subsidy

Client received this letter today:

Dear xxxx

Share your views and experiences

You may have heard about recent changes made by the Government to the housing benefit system.

We are writing to ask for your help with a research study about the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy, which was introduced in April this year for all working age social sector tenants receiving housing benefit who are under occupying their home. This research is being conducted on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions and Ipsos MORI, an independent research organisation.

Ipsos MORI will be conducting interviews with 1,500 people who may or may be affected by the policy across England, Scotland and Wales, and an interviewer may visit you in October or November. Your name has been selected at random from people claiming housing benefit and we are contacting you for research purposes only. We would like to include you to find out more about your views and experiences.

Your details are protected by the Data Protection Act and anything you say to the interviewer will be treated as strictly confidential. No-one looking at the study findings will be able to indentify you in any way.

If you have any questions or do not wish to take part ....... blah blah blah

We hope that you will take this opportunity to have your say about the recent changes made to the housing benefit system.

Yours sincerely

Vicky Petrie
Housing Research & Analysis Division
DWP

Stephen Finlay
Project Director
Ipsos MORI

Client who received this letter has just spent months battling his LA to be exempt due to overnight care being required and is very much looking forward to telling the interviewer exactly what he thinks

I hope he will also tell the interviewer that “Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy”, especially with capitalized initials, is a risible attempt to resist the popularity of the term “bedroom tax” and officials who repeat it come across as obsequious lackeys.  The technically correct “Maximum rent (social sector)” would do just fine, as would “social sector size criteria” (the jargon that most LAs seem to have adopted for public consumption, although like everyone else they call it “bedroom tax” in private).  It’s as if there used to be a regulation headed “Spare Room Subsidy” and they’ve removed it.

You might be interested in the affordability tables that I’ve just posted a link to.  They include figures for each LA in GB on the amounts of the reduction based on local rent levels.