Plan to dock housing benefit dropped

The government has shelved plans to dock the housing benefit of
antisocial neighbours after a consultation exercise revealed
massive opposition to the proposed sanction.

Work and pensions minister Chris Pond said last week that, although
the government had not ruled out using other measures for dealing
with antisocial behaviour in the future, it wanted to “judge the
effectiveness of the range of existing measures before introducing
a new one”.

Responses to the consultation paper, issued in May last year by the
Department for Work and Pensions, show that 81 per cent of
councils, 90 per cent of charities and 97 per cent of registered
social landlords opposed using housing benefit sanctions to tackle
antisocial behaviour.

Homelessness charity Shelter hailed the government’s decision,
saying the measures would have created more poverty and
homelessness.