{"id":1155,"date":"2013-11-13T12:32:46","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T12:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2013-11-13T12:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T12:32:46","slug":"universal-credit-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/universal-credit-concerns.html","title":{"rendered":"Universal Credit Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the biggest social landlords in the private sector has voiced his<br \/>\nconcerns to the BBC about the roll out of the new Universal Credit payments to<br \/>\ntenants. The combined benefit payment has been introduced as part of<br \/>\ngovernment reforms to the whole benefits system. At the moment claimants<br \/>\nreceive up to six separate benefits payments, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/video.lha_tenants.html#watch-demo-anchor\">Housing Benefit<\/a>, but<br \/>\nonce the change over has been completed, these separate payments will be<br \/>\nmerged into one. The changeover has already begun in a few areas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Self-Made Social Entrepreneur<\/strong><br \/>\nKevin Green owns more than 700 homes in the private sector and approximately<br \/>\n60% of them are let to tenants claiming benefits. Mr Green is fearful that<br \/>\ntenants will soon fall behind on paying their rent once Universal Credit kicks<br \/>\nin. He thinks many <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/video.create_tenant.html#watch-demo-anchor\">tenants<\/a> will find it hard to budget their money and benefit<br \/>\npayments normally earmarked for the rent could end up being swallowed up by<br \/>\nother expenses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tenants Lack Budgeting Skills<\/strong><br \/>\nAt least one trial run of the new system seems to indicate that this is<br \/>\nexactly what will happen once Universal Credit becomes standard practice.<br \/>\nFigures showed that tenants living in social housing in Torfaen definitely had<br \/>\na problem managing their money once their benefits were streamlined into one<br \/>\nsingle payment. Rent arrears shot up from \u00a320k to \u00a3140k over seven months. Mr<br \/>\nGreen makes the point that he may be forced to pull out of the social housing<br \/>\nsector if he ends up dealing with major rent arrears, which could lead to a<br \/>\nshortage of homes.<\/p>\n<p>Are you a social landlord? Are you worried about the introduction of the new<br \/>\nUniversal Credit payments? If so, let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the biggest social landlords in the private sector has voiced his concerns to the BBC about the roll out of the new Universal Credit payments to tenants. The combined benefit payment has been introduced as part of government &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/universal-credit-concerns.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}