Bedroom tax hits 540 of our poorest households

AT the moment 540 households in Salisbury and south Wiltshire are struggling with the impact of the ‘bedroom tax’.That means they have had their housing benefit reduced because their homes have more bedrooms than the government deems necessary, and they are supposed to move somewhere smaller.The number of these households including someone who receives Disability Living Allowance is 215.
This is a shameful state of affairs. Where are they supposed to go?
Finding one and two-bedroomed homes that people on benefits can afford – let alone ones that are suitable for people with disabilities - is not easy in our private rental market.
Many landlords don’t want to know, because since the government changed the way housing benefit is paid, it has become easier for tenants to run up arrears. Also, mortgage providers and insurers often insist on tenants being in work.
What about council or housing association properties, then?
Well, there simply aren’t enough.
Wiltshire Council, which gave me all these figures in response to a Freedom of Information request, said that between last April, when the bedroom tax took effect, and the end of the year, 768 local households had their benefit cut.
Yet in the three-month period from July to September, to take an example, only 100 smaller homes became available for letting in our part of the county.
That means hundreds of people were, and still are, effectively being fined for their inability to move.
You can’t blame the council. Wiltshire has been trying to set a rule that 40% of all big new developments should be affordable homes. That could make a big difference over time. But a government-appointed inspector has ruled that the target is too tough on builders and has demanded a rethink.
I recently watched a short film on YouTube, released last autumn, called Friary Voices. It’s about life in the city centre estate.
One disabled resident tells the camera crew that she has two spare rooms and has done her utmost to find a smaller ground floor flat, but with no luck. Around her are bags and boxes packed with her belongings. Because of the bedroom tax, she says, her situation is “getting quite desperate”.
I do hope she has found somewhere by now.
This is an ugly, vengeful tax that can only help to destroy communities.
If you want to force people out of their homes to make room for others, you’ve got to give them somewhere to go.

Hasn't Tesco got enough of Salisbury's custom already?

EMBOLDENED by success, Tesco is seeking to tighten its grip on Salisbury and south Wiltshire.
It wants to build a ‘pod’ in front of its Southampton Road megastore offering key cutting, shoe and watch repairs and dry cleaning.
What’s wrong with that? All those services are already on offer in Waitrose. You could call it healthy competition. Or convenience for customers.
Yes, but … where is all this leading us? How would you like Salisbury to look in a few years’ time? What sort of place would you like to live in?
Since Tesco opened its pharmacy, I can think of two chemists that have closed. It may be coincidence.
But if this application is approved, our key cutters, shoe repairers and dry cleaners will have little chance of hanging on. It’s tough enough already.
And what will take their place? More coffee shops and chain restaurants, just in case the ones the Salisbury Vision have in mind for the redeveloped Central Car Park aren’t enough?
We’ll be able to stuff ourselves sick on identikit menus whilst planning our next shopping spree in stores selling identikit merchandise. Because only the same old national names will pay the rents in any new complex.
Interesting independent traders will soon find they can only afford to do business online.
But I digress. Back to Tesco.
It already rules the roost in Amesbury and Tidworth. It owns One Stop ‘corner shops’ in Harnham, Bishopdown and Wilton. It’s rebuilding its city centre supermarket and popping a hotel on top for good measure.
Not content with all that, it intends to turn the Malmesbury Arms in Wilton Road into a Tesco Express. And why wouldn’t it? From a corporate point of view, it makes business sense.
I asked Morrisons last week whether it’s lost interest in the Old Manor site. If so, you couldn’t blame it. A spokeswoman replied in the nicest possible way that she couldn’t say yes and she couldn’t say no. I reckon that leaves us free to speculate. Maybe it’s in a secret bidding war with Wiltshire Police?
Meanwhile, back at the Southampton Road roundabout ….
National guidelines suggest that councils should discourage out-of-town developments that suck the life out of traditional shopping centres.
Last week the government was criticised by its own climate change experts for failing to prevent building on flood plains.
Yet still the big boys find it worthwhile to try their luck. And if Sainsbury’s-on-Sea gets the nod, all we’ll be left with soon is a choice between monstermarkets, glaring out at each other across our jammed dual carriageways.

Nobody's fooled by these bogus public consultations

I DON’T know about you, but I rather think that a public consultation ought to be about consulting the public.
It isn’t, of course, as the Hillcote parents and their severely disabled children have found to their cost.
The families fought hard to save the city’s respite centre, but I don’t suppose they were really any more surprised than I was when Wiltshire’s Clinical Commissioning Group – meeting conveniently miles away in Devizes – rubber-stamped its closure despite a petition signed by more than 5,000 supporters and pleas from Mencap, our MP and local councillors.
What would it have taken to change these people’s minds?
Answer: Nothing short of a riot. Their minds were made up before they staged a ‘public consultation’ meeting that served cruelly to raise vain hopes.
They were made up years ago, when the authorities stopped telling parents that this facility was available, so they could claim that hardly anyone used it.
The commissioners’ decision to delay the closure until next year, while specialist foster carers are supposedly recruited, merely postpones the inevitable.
When you ask people why they mistrust politicians and the quangos through which they rule our lives, and why so few bother to vote, they’ll often say: “Oh well, they’re all the same, aren’t they? Doesn’t matter what I think, they’ll do what they want.”
Er, yes ….
Which brings me to another development that ought to worry anyone who cares about social inclusion.
Wiltshire Council (“Not them again,” I hear you groan) are to hold a ‘consultation’ about cost-cutting options that include closing 24 youth centres and making 144 staff redundant.
Naturally, this was discussed and settled behind closed doors, after the public and press were excluded from a cabinet meeting.
How does it tally with the council’s promise to provide facilities for young bands including a recording studio at the new Five Rivers campus, to replace Grosvenor House when it’s flogged off for redevelopment?
That’s right, Grosvenor House, home of Bass Connection, the acclaimed music project that won its guiding light, Keith Gale, a lifetime achievement award from the Journal’s Local Hero judges in 2010.
Who’s going to be running that, then?
For ‘community campus’, read ‘cultural void’ with an economy-sized police station tacked on.
Lately I’ve been enjoying the attempts by councillor Richard Clewer to convince a sceptical public, via the ‘Comments’ facility on the Salisbury Journal website, that Wiltshire hasn’t cut any services.
In the current round of political pass-the-parcel, cllr Clewer is the council’s housing spokesman.
He must be thanking his lucky stars that when the music stopped this week, he was no longer holding the portfolio for youth.

Proof that Salisbury's parking charges just don't add up

EVEN the government believes Wiltshire’s parking charges are too high.
With an eye on next year’s general election, John Glen’s boss, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, has declared on a visit to Chippenham’s Tory candidate that councils are “failing in their duty” if they don’t give shoppers a free half-hour.
He said the same thing, apparently, at a meeting with Wiltshire Head Girl Jane Scott. How I wish I’d been a fly on the wall. Talk about Godzilla meets King Kong.
Just before Christmas – always the best time to bury bad news – Mrs Scott’s council quietly released figures that prove how counter-productive its parking policy has been.
They were set out in tables, in type so tiny I could barely read it with a magnifying glass.
Maths was never my strong point. But after a lot of adding, subtracting and head-scratching, I worked out that the £1.3million profit from city centre car parks in 2012/13 was more than half a million down on two years earlier, before the charges were hiked.
Income fell more than £200,000 and running costs rose by £325,000.
Income from street meters rocketed by £58,000, but so did costs, by £57,000.
And what were those costs, other than routine maintenance? Employing wardens and paying business rates to the government.
According to this document, on average only 10 per cent of spaces in Culver Street car park are occupied. In the Maltings and Central car parks, it’s a measly 31 per cent.
There is arguably some better news. The park and ride’s operating deficit has been halved.
But if Wiltshire’s half a million worse off from city parking, and still half a million out of pocket on park and ride, it’s no better off. And what’s the cost been to traders?
Support for bus services fell by almost £437,000 in the same two-year period, by the way.
I can only hope the 12,075 fines issued by our tireless ‘enforcement officers’ last year are being put to good use. Are we really so much more lawless than residents of Melksham, Trowbridge, Devizes, etc? Or just more punctiliously patrolled?
As a reporter back in 2011 I was heavily involved in the Salisbury Journal’s Show Some Sense campaign, which won a promise from Wiltshire to review its charges this year.
No date for the review has been fixed, I’m told. It certainly won’t form part of the spring budget-setting process, so don’t get your hopes up just yet.
But a general election on the horizon should help to concentrate minds. Expect more ministerial visits.