We should all be indebted to the Daily Mirror for the work put in to gather a breakdown of the housing benefit being paid to private landlords by every local authority on this septic isle. The figures are for “last year”, though it’s unclear whether this means the calendar year or the financial year ending on March 31st. Either way, we are only interested in the figures for the Welsh councils, but gluttons for statistics can find the full piece here. The table I have produced below gives the bare bones of this scam essential funding You will see that the bottom line (how nice to use that term literally) gives two totals for two of the columns, this is due to the figures calculated in different ways not agreeing. Any statistician out there is welcome to explain this apparent anomaly.
Let’s start by looking at the national picture I’ve tried to explain in the table. It tells us that, as a general rule, urban authorities pay a lower percentage of their housing benefit to private landlords than more rural authorities, with Torfaen paying just 18.2%. (Though the Vale of Glamorgan, with 49.7% needs some explaining. Unfortunately the VoG council declined to release detailed figures.) The two exceptions to this rule, the two rural authorities paying the lowest percentages, lower than many urban areas, are Monmouthshire (28.6%) and Gwynedd (32.2%). Monmouthshire’s low figure can be accounted for partly by its prosperity, while the figures for both councils are also influenced by a refusal to patronise many of the Labour-allied shysters dealt with below.
The two authorities paying the very highest percentages to private landlords are – and I bet you’d never have guessed! – on the north coast. Conwy pays out 50.8% and Denbighshire 53.2%. (Though not far behind is Ceredigion with 48.2%.) Many unfamiliar with this area will think of these as rural councils but they are overwhelmingly urban, containing Llandudno, Conwy, Prestatyn, Colwyn Bay, and of course – Rhyl! Much of the housing benefit paid here will be going to slum landlords and third sector parasites that have shipped in ‘clients’ from Liverpool and Manchester, then demanded that Wales pays to look after their charges, while also providing said parasites with salaries and pension packages . . . for to demur would be ‘racist’. One such organisation in Conwy, the biggest grossing private landlord, is dealt with below, but Denbighshire came over all coy and named just four out of the top twenty earners on its patch.
For more detailed results, you’ll see that I have screen captured from the Daily Mirror interactive to make the gallery below. (In order to avoid confusion I have kept to the names – some obviously English – used on the DM website, so it starts with ‘Anglesey’.) Keep your cursor off the image and each of our 22 local authorities will appear for 8 seconds. If you want to study the details for any particular council then leave your cursor on the image or its black surround. If you don’t like the gallery then just click on the name of the council in the details section below to bring up the information. (God! I spoil you!)
A number of councils refused to give out information beyond the total amount paid to private landlords, these shy, retiring types are, Anglesey, Ceredigion, Flintshire, Powys, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Vale of Glamorgan and Wrexham. A mixed bag in terms of the rural / urban divide, culture and language, and also political control. Other councils released only partial information, in that they named some of the private landlords trousering the loot, but not all. Though if I was one of the private landlords named I’d want to know why others were granted anonymity. These councils were Denbighshire, Monmouthshire and Torfaen. So that’s ten of Wales’ twenty-two local authorities withholding information. Not a great start.
So let us look a little more closely at the twelve local authorities that made full disclosure, and let’s do it alphabetically.
BLAENAU GWENT: The individuals named mean nothing to me, and this is why I suggest that local knowledge will be needed to identify these people. The same will apply in other areas. The one name I do recognise is Wallich Clifford Ltd, the charity for the ‘homeless’, which received £56,728. Is there that much homelessness in Blaenau Gwent? Not always easy to keep track of Wallich Clifford aka The Wallich and operating under various guises as both a charity and a business. Though top of the list in Blaenau Gwent, by some way, with £263,159, is Ronald Herbert Lawrence. So who is he, one of the Herbert clan?
BRIDGEND: The biggest recipient of housing benefit in Bridgend is . . . well, Bridgend. The council paid itself £685.595, which I don’t quite understand seeing as the council housing stock appears to have been taken over by Valleys to Coast Housing. I suppose it depends when the transfer took place. Someone down that neck of the woods will have the answer. Next in the queue for the easy money vital funding is A1 Lettings of Maesteg, coining no less than £391,410. Wallich Clifford appears again – this time as ‘The Wallich’ – for £139,216.
CAERPHILLY: Again, many of the individuals listed will be known to those familiar with the area. Though the biggest earner by a mile is the Shaw Healthcare Group Ltd of Cardiff which, as the name suggests, specialises in care homes rather than rented accommodation. Shaw scooped £482,792. Second on the list, with a paltry £83,739, is the Care Management Group, an English company with a Welsh branch operation. Are there really that many care homes in Caerphilly? If so, why? And does the absence of The Wallich / Wallich Clifford suggest that there is no homelessness in the borough? Maybe the homeless are all in the care homes!
CARDIFF: The first thing to say about Cardiff is that the amounts paid are surprisingly low given the total figure of over 53 million pounds paid to private landlords, with the top landlord getting just £192,822. So it’s reasonable to assume that there are a great many small- to medium-sized enterprises in the city. Unless I’m missing something? Whatever the answer to that, one of the major earners in Cardiff, with £138,908, is the Reside Housing Association Ltd, a company based in Kingston-upon-Thames. But if there is a local need for the service provided by Reside why doesn’t Cardiff council find a Welsh company to provide that service rather than sending money out of Wales? And despite Cardiff having the largest population of any Welsh council, and despite The Wallich / Wallich Clifford being headquartered in Cardiff, it does not appear on the list of the top private landlords. Why? In fact, the most striking feature of the Cardiff figures is the total absence of the big third sector recipients found elsewhere, found especially in Swansea.
CARMARTHENSHIRE: Always ‘interesting’, Carmarthenshire doesn’t let us down by throwing up a major query. The biggest private landlord, with £455,893, is listed as ‘Social Lettings Agency’, which turns out to be an umbrella for a number of local housing associations, Coastal Group, Gwalia, Cantref and others (though, confusingly, Coastal also appears on its own, lower down the list, with a figure of £62,134). Suggesting that the council ruled over by the litigious and overbearing Mark James regards housing associations as private landlords, which I would argue is correct. Carmarthenshire pays 36.8% of its housing benefit to private landlords, compared to Cardiff’s 35.8%. But why don’t housing associations appear in the Cardiff list, and the lists for most of the other authorities?
CONWY: Touchstones 12 is the biggest recipient of housing benefit here with £167,485, and as already stated it makes its money by bringing into northern Wales alcoholics and drug addicts from north west England. Another big earner is Sanctuary Trust, an English charity also dealing with the homeless, alcoholics and drug addicts. Just read the link I’ve provided and see how grateful these parasites are for ‘Welsh’ Government help. And you wonder why Wales is poor! Again, no housing associations listed.
GWYNEDD: Few surprises here. The main recipient being Agorfa / Cefni Lettings. Though it’s not easy to find information about this outfit, certainly I can’t find the website, only ‘company check’ references and a Facebook page. As far as I’m concerned the jury is still out on Agorfa / Cefni, it receives a lot of money but I’d like to know more about the organisations it deals with. The same applies to number two on the list, GISDA. Things are much clearer with another body, one that received £59,027 last year, though I’m surprised to see Nacro Cymru, the organisation for offenders and ex-cons, so active in largely law-abiding Gwynedd.
MERTHYR TYDFIL: Being the smallest of our local authorities in terms of population, and one of the poorest, there’s not a lot of housing benefit to be distributed in Merthyr. The biggest payout was £43,104 to a ‘Mr Evans’, no forename or even an initial. As for the rest, they’re mainly individuals and a few small companies.
NEATH PORT TALBOT: More individuals interspersed with small companies are to be found in NPT, but with six exceptions who all received over £100,000 last year. These are, Tony John & Co (£498,113); Port Talbot YMCA (£240,398), “No local connection required”; Pennaf Sales and Lettings Ltd (£123,753); Parker Estates of Skewen (£118,263); Mr David Breach (£116,330); and I E S Davies Property Rentals (£103,959), which seems to be based in Ceredigion, though of course we can’t check how much business it does on its home patch because Ceredigion won’t release any detailed figures.
NEWPORT: Top of the pops in our third city is ‘Mrs M Payne’, with £181,558, but a quick check on Google turned up nothing. So who is she? We can only assume that Newport City Council knows, if only to send the cheques to the correct address. Second on the list with £148,051 is Newport Mind. Now we all know that Mind is the charity helping those with mental health problems, but why is it a major recipient of housing benefit in Newport but not in other local authority areas? Third on the list with £135,311 is the Libra Investment Property Group, another of those agencies that acts on behalf of landlords and those who’ve taken advantage of ‘Buy to Let’ mortgages. It has offices in Newport and Wolverhampton.
PEMBROKESHIRE: If Carmarthenshire’s dysfunctional council has provided much entertainment over recent years then the same can also be said of Pembrokeshire with the Bryn Parry-Jones saga. Though it doesn’t end with the great man. A case currently being investigated by a number of agencies is that of grants awarded in Pembroke Dock for renovation work that, it is alleged, was never carried out, or certainly did not cost anything like the amount charged. The developer at the centre of the confusion is one Cathal 
McCosker, who also trades as E-Lettings of Pembroke Dock. The panel (click to enlarge) shows a review from the Yell E-Lettings page. Anyway, who do you think comes top of the Pembrokeshire list for private landlords in receipt of housing benefit? Yup, leading the pack with £236,834 is Mr Cathal Eamonn McCosker . . . and lower down the list, with a mere £35,248, we find E-Lettings. Compared to McCosker the rest are small fry, though I was taken by the name Graham Perfect.
SWANSEA: Ah! the city of my dreams. At the top of the list, receiving no less than £1,632,262 in 2014 is “Community Lives Consortium” which “provides support for adults with learning disabilities working in partnership with Social Services and Health Agencies” in Swansea and Neath Port Talbot. (Though it seems to receive no housing benefit from NPT!) Now I’m sure this body does good work, but knowing my home town’s reputation for third sector spivery there is bound to be a strong element here of ‘Invent an “ishoo”‘ and then milk the system for all you can get!’.
Second on the list with a whopping £727,426 is Walsingham, yet another outfit providing support for those who cannot look after themselves. Walsingham is an English company, with English partners and suppliers, so this is another dollop of Welsh money leaving the country. Also on the Swansea list we find, inevitably, The Wallich (£588,342) and a host of third sector grant-grabbers such as Cyrenians Cymru (£207,651), Swansea Womens Aid (£190,463), Haven Trust Supporting People Ltd (£135,994), S.Y.S.H.P. (Drws Agored) (£130,161), Cymdeithas Caer Las (£118,801), S.Y.S.H.P. (again!) (£103,525), Black Association of Women Step Out Ltd (BAWSO) (£98,323), Cymdeithas Caer Las (Carmarthen Road Project) (£77,355).
It grieves me to say it, but Swansea is a magnet for third sector shysters. If I’m wrong, then explain to me how other local authorities can manage without all these agencies. If I’m wrong, then explain why organisations such as The Wallich, BAWSO and others, with their headquarters in Cardiff, seem to do all their work in Swansea. Is it – as I have been told, and as the Cardiff figures suggest – that neither Cardiff council nor the ‘Welsh’ Government wants the capital’s streets despoiled with dossers, disabled people and others who might give important visitors the wrong impression? Whatever the answer, it is clear that to justify the grants, the housing benefit and all the other goodies that keep so many in unnecessary jobs the groups operating in Swansea must be importing many of their ‘clients’ because there’s no way Swansea, or the wider conurbation, could provide enough.
*
Some of you reading this will dismiss me as a callous, hard-hearted bastard, but I’m not. This article is prompted by the knowledge that the housing benefit system is a racket that attracts the wrong sort of people to rented housing and the third sector. It is a system that is taken advantage of in so many ways, especially in Wales. For example, in dealing with Swansea I mentioned Walsingham, which received from Swansea council last year £727,426. The Walsingham website tells us that this company operates across 
Englandandwales. Yet according to the Daily Mirror article that supplied the figures, this £727,426 from Swansea was Walsingham’s total income from housing benefit. (Click on panel to enlarge.) So why doesn’t Walsingham receive housing benefit for any of its many operations in England?
I genuinely want to believe that housing benefit is being well spent and that people are being helped without those providing the funding – and this means all of us – being taken advantage of. But this is not the case. We have a corrupted housing benefit system in urgent need of reform. And given the colonial relationship between Wales and England Wales will always lose out.
UPDATE 05.05.2015: I should of course have mentioned this in the main article, but it needs to be said. In the table I’ve used subtract the amount paid to private landlords from the total housing benefit and it gives us a figure of £634m. The bulk of this will be going to housing associations. Add this to the amounts paid in Social Housing Grant – and remembering that housing associations also have yet other funding streams! – and we get an idea of how much money is paid to the third sector, which is then promoted as if it was a real economy. It is not, and never will be. An over-large third sector is a sure indicator of poverty. And because it cannot generate wealth it guarantees that the poverty persists. And when one country is prepared to take in another country’s ‘problems’ then the problem will be exacerbated.
Been reading & occasionally writing on this site for several months and excluding 1 or 2 odd contributors ( who generally give me reason to chuckle, so not all that bad ! ) most of the contributions reveal a terrific level of insight into our national condition, such as the content on this page.
Yet, we are currently watching one of the most sterile political debates ever inflicted on the TV viewing public with candidates of all colours spewing out pre-rehearsed party lines on a limited range of big “ishoos” with red lines and other postures being all the rage. It’s a shame that even at local level there is little or no evidence that any of our prospective leaders or representatives are listening to real people. Any prospect of all this nonsense changing for the better within the next 5 – 10 years ?
A good post Brychan, and work or meaningful day time activity is an area not resolved for people with learning difficulties. A lot of work in the old days was as you say ‘out of hospital’ for the less disabled patients and I had clients working on the bins or doing light assembly. Now there is very little around for them because of job competition. Also most of the old Day Centres which did industrial work have closed because of ideological reasons. (seen as segregated / stigmatised etc). In my experience most users loved their Day Centres because it made them feel part of working life.
When I say ‘workhouse’, I mean the living environment rather than work and what I was trying to say is that the tenancy arrangements are a step forward from living on a Ward. I started my working life on such a Ward and there were many problems, the patients were institutionalised, wore shared clothing, staff ratios were extremely low and there was much cross infection.
There is an interesting history, pre WW2 the learning disability hospitals means tested and the care was not too bad because the hospitals were not full but after WW2 with the NHS middle class people put their children in hospital often urged by medics. This had unintended consequences and they became overloaded, and underfunded hence the scandals (some in Wales) in the 1960s, then the push to close them.
Wales did lead the way through the All Wales Strategy, but has lost direction since devolution, debates surface occasionally but there is a lack of real commitment at the centre. The current arrangements of using housing associations do provide some good accommodation (it is not true that most live in poor areas) and is better than institutional care. I would agree with you Brychan about Remploy too, sadly the anti institutional debate has been used by politicians determined to close them using the rhetoric of de-institutionalisation. This was aided and abetted by more able service users to the detriment of those less able to advocate for themselves.
Enough of the social history and sorry for hijacking Jac’s blog.
Jac you are wrong to describe many of these organisations as ‘third sector shysters’. Many eg Cartrefi Cymru house people with learning difficulties and the housing benefit is part of the income paying for people to live independently. Most are local people who have left home or institutions at the risk of being a historical bore, the provision was made after the big old hospitals closed and for the vast majority of the tenants, it is better than living in a hospital ward. (a big but not trumpeted success of the old Welsh Office leading England). Others are organisations helping the homeless, care leavers and women leaving domestic abuse. Local authorities have failed miserably in running such provision, they are too bureaucratic. Housing benefit plus social care ££ pays for the ‘care packages’ but many of the residents need 1:1 support to live independently. Running a women’s refuge is not a easy job either and some of the grant funding helps with outreach and work with the children.
Unless your ideal Wales comprises nobody with disabilities, no homeless people and happy, stable relationships, this kind of provision is essential unless we go back to hospitals and workhouses.
There are still question, I agree about pull factors and the on costs of some of these organisations, but do not lump them all together. Meanwhile an interesting Radnorshire tale from pre Welfare State provision ie nowhere to go http://terrydrayton.wix.com/knighton#!william-edward-lucas/c22xa
Of course you’re right, only a heartless bastard could disagree. But with the best will in the world it’s quite obvious that a) within Wales, Swansea is being dumped on and b) within this glorious Union Wales, particularly the north coast, is being dumped on. If we are being fair, then let’s share out the responsibilities, and practice that English saying, ‘Charity begins at home’.
I’m not sure I agree, adarynefoedd. When I first started work for underground there used to be a shift of such residents from a type of local ‘hospital’ you describe. They used to work in the lamp room and wash down the pithead baths and employed by the NCB. It was a tradition inherited from one of the more ‘philanthropic’ coal owners. I think you’re wrong to say this type of employment is ‘work-house’. They were paid the same rates as any other surface worker. When this ‘hospital’ closed, their wages were paid in-kind to a Remploy scheme assembling electronic components. Hoovers has a similar scheme for factory floor cleaners and tooling stores. The colliery is now closed, as has the Remploy scheme. Alas, the new generation of poor unfortunates are on benefits and imprisoned in social housing. Things have changed but I do know someone who now works on the bins, with an arts degree. I think it’s sheer arrogance to suggest that somehow a form of gainful employment of those who lived in ‘hospice’ accommodation are not capable of living without state benefits and need their lives to be run by shyster third sector organisations, creaming commission on state benefits. Certainly not dumped into Wales to keep ‘undesirables’ out of the leafy suburbs of England. Those with physical or mental challenges should have the same access as anyone else to gainful employment, not imprisoned into poor housing by the third sector ‘care’ industry.
Well said!
Excellent work Jac. Thank you for bringing yet another bombshell to the public attention.
Torfaenwr and Treforus have identified that some tenants pay HB direct to their private landlords. There is therefore an unquantifiable figure missing from what we’ve gleaned from the Daily Mirror exercise, so God knows what the ceiling figure for HB might be. To me, the figures you have reproduced for amount of HB per head of population is bad enough. We have £311 or £321 for Wales as a whole depending which you choose. But these are for the whole population including all those who make no contribution to the pot like children (approximately 20% of population under 16?), and the economically inactive, many of whom will pay no income tax and usually no national insurance. We all end up paying indirect taxation like VAT of course. But the figure for each of us who pay tax in Wales towards this benefit must therefore be considerably higher. Who knows – could it be £500 plus, £600 plus – even more? And about one third of this overall figure seems to be being pocketed by private landlords. I’m more than a bit pissed off with this. Especially knowing one of the bigger claimants in the Neath patch. To think my taxes are keeping the bastard in a manner of which most of us can only dream!
Napoleon called England a nation of shopkeepers. We are fast becoming a nation of landlords with some of the population owning goodness knows how many homes, while many even “middle class” young people struggle to get on the housing ladder, albeit with good incomes and virtually zero interest rates. When I was a kid, no-one I knew had more than one house and houses were homes for families to live in, not to soak up working people’s taxes to line the pockets of investors and chancers. It will all come to no good in the end.
Housing is an absolute mess. All parties promise to build ‘enough’ new homes and make things easier for new buyers, and they all know they won’t do it. To make it possible for everybody who wanted to buy a home to be able buy one, or to build enough to meet the demand, would result in a dramatic fall in the value of everyone else’s home. There would be riots on Acacia Avenue. It’s a simple case of supply and demand, flood the market with lots of new houses and the price will drop.
The picture is then complicated, and prices inflated beyond the reach of too many potential buyers by the ‘Buy to Let’ mortgage, designed solely for investors of the type we see in the lists I’ve reproduced. What is the justification for ‘Buy to Let’? What purpose does it serve beyond inflating house prices and denying people the chance of home ownership?
Even worse, it is bizarrely very much easier to obtain a Buy to Let mortgage than a normal residential homeowner one. There are stringent rules about a homeowner being able to repay the capital during the term that do not apply to a Buy to Let mortgage as it is simply an investment vehicle. Therefore Buy To Let buyers have a considerable advantage in the housing market.
Something to add to your library: ‘The Rich Rules: Steps to wealth and happiness.’ by Kevin Green, Private Landlord. http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/8203-Kevin-Green-s-Millionaire-secrets-uncovered/story-26439021-detail/story.html
Mr Green (no relation to Michael Green / Grant Shapps / Sebastion Fox) is something of a role model*. So much a role model that he was invited to talk to school children about his ‘work’. http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Millionaire-passes-secrets-school-pupils/story-22920052-detail/story.html
* I wish that there was a punctuation mark representing cynicism.
in those darker moments I imagine that we are in a period akin to the decline and fall of the (any) empire. When a society promotes such “achievements” onto a pedestal and tells its kids that those “achievers” are sound role models then we’ve given ourselves a short fuse ! Green may have done well to climb out of his personal difficulty but in reality he’s now treading on hundreds of others in celebrating his success. Now he may be one of the (very few) benevolent landlords but the silence from happy tenants is deafening.
Later this week we’ll have a new government with a new mandate, it will wave it’s stick/wand and all our problems will be solved. Oh tut, I’m having that odd dream again, must change my medication !
Do correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect these figures may constitute Housing Benefit paid directly to these landlords. This would exclude any money these landlords receive indirectly via the tenants. Some tenants receive HB into their own accounts and subsequently pay the landlord themselves (including I believe all those who receive partial HB, including all those working on poverty wages so low they remain eligible for HB).
These landlords may in fact be receiving a good deal more from the public purse that the figures shown here.
one thing for sure they ain’t getting less !
The racketeers are making serious 7 figure incomes in London, and the native shits in Wales have aspirations to get up into that league. By placing an upper limit on benefits all the government has done in reality is given these crooks a target income per unit to aim for. More than ever the situation cries out for a building plan heavily focussed on increasing relevant housing stock in the large metropolitan areas of England ( so they can keep their folks, good and bad, close to where they want/need to be ) and a Welsh programme of replacement build enabling some of the worst accomodation to be demolished and suitable units made available in public and private ownership. Where there is real evidence of population growth by all means build even more in those areas but no speculative activity reliant on imported owners or tenants for those reasons previously aired on this site.
I was thinking the same thing. Private landlords very often have tenants who are paid HB direct (I have a recollection that the regulations were changed some years ago to much protest from landlords-although it may be something within an individual council’s powers). Excellent thread though and information well gathered.
Very good as usual and a reminder that it’s a landlord subsidy and one that inflates the rents that working people have to pay. There are many places where rents would be substantially lower if a truly free market operated.
I wish I’d thought of that term, ‘Landlord subsidy’.
I wish I’d thought of that term, ‘Landlord subsidy’. Says it all, really.
An outfit called BAWSO got close to £100k last year in Swansea. Their annual report last year says “In some instances BME men’s experience of abuse is compounded by the disempowerment experienced immigrating to Wales”. I was wondering what this claim is based upon. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group of the UK Border Agency specifically identifies Wales as a low incidence area in their submission of evidence to the Welsh Government Refugee Inclusion Strategy. So what does this ‘immigrating to Wales’ mean in this context? From England? BAWSO now employs 80 staff funded by the Welsh Government and the annual report says their ‘phase two’ funding includes one-stop-shops being established in Gwynnedd (their spelling) and Llangefni.
I suspect that BAWSO is importing into Wales women from ethnic minorities in order to pretend there’s an ‘ishoo’ and justify its funding. It’s run by a woman called Rose Mutale Nyoni Merrill who is married to Travers Merrill, and he is, or used to be, the one running Rhondda Life Ltd. Both are Labour Party members. Something else I was told by an insider is that the family also had a company called ABESU which had difficulty distinguishing between it’s own resources and those of BAWSO which of course had been paid for out of public funds.
Of interest, a number of the board of trustees of BOWSO (besides a Malik, relationship unknown) are also trustees of “The Royal Commonwealth Society of Wales” and a charity called “The Mentor Ring” This Mentor Ring has an accommodation address at Cefn Coed, Merthyr Tydfil. The leader of the ‘Mentor Ring’ is a Mr Stephen Carr who currently works as a Community Safety Officer for Cardiff Council. Before finding lucrative employment in Wales, he used to be on the Hereford City Crime Prevention Panel and Herefordshire Police and Community Liaison Committee. He stood as a Labour Party candidate in Cyfarthfa ward in 2004.
well done putting that lot together and offering some sort of insight into the “industry” that has grown up, largely uncommented, over the last 30 or so years.
Never have had any direct experience of the “social benefits driven market” but have half share in a small property which will eventually be sold on. However a friend has built up a small portfolio of terraced properties in industrial North Gwent ( as was ! ) and has focussed on letting to people in work because of anecdotal evidence that tenants on benefits were often “trouble”. Every time he has advertised a property to let he has been flooded with enquiries from assorted bodies pushing “ready made” tenants on higher rents ( i.e funded by benefits ).
This suggests an up side down market where those that have little or nothing are often paying higher rents than those in some sort of employment. That in itself does nothing to remove anecdotal prejudice against people on benefits, regardless of merit. It also indicates that demand is still well in excess of supply in areas where access to housing is seriously defective.
So we have a private sector that doesn’t have many scruples providing services to a public/3rd sector that doesn’t care 2 f**ks as long as people are “processed” in a way that keeps those running these organisations in salaries and benefits.
That’s the core problem – it’s more profitable for Welsh housing associations and private landlords to house criminals from England than to house hard-working, law-abiding locals. Due to the insane funding available. Until this is corrected, saving us all billions, the problem will persist.
On the Bridgend figures, the stock transfer took place in September 2003. Bridgend has a single/common social housing register to reduce paperwork because although V2C are the predominant housing association in the area, Hafod, Wales & West and Linc also have a large number of properties – and aren’t listed either. I’m going to presume BCBC collects housing benefit on behalf of those housing associations which are part of the common register and then distribute it accordingly.
Most areas now operate a single register, but I haven’t seen the housing benefit take this route.