Bedroom tax: Housing association launches toolkit to assess impact on future income

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Housing

A housing association has launched a new 'occupancy analyser' toolkit to help assess the financial impact of the bedroom tax on its future income.

Working with detailed profiling data on families living in over 90% of its properties, Wirral Partnership Homes has been able to estimate the likely impact of the government's welfare benefit reforms, specifically the proposed deductions in housing benefits that will apply to households deemed to under-occupy their properties from April 2013.

Developed in-house by WPH staff, the occupancy analyser (named “HousBOAT) calculates deductions to housing benefit entitlements, based upon whether or not a household will under-occupy its property and for how long this may continue - based upon the gender, ages and relationship status of household members.

This calculation can be done at the push of a button for a single household or for all 12,000 plus WPH tenants.

As well as helping WPH communicate the impact of welfare benefit reforms to its customers, HousBOAT also allows the housing association to ascertain the potential risks to its future income posed by the reforms, and to monitor these risks over time.

By setting certain parameters such as rent increases for a set number of years, HousBoat will enable WPH to estimate exactly how many households will be affected, at what level, and for how long.

This toolkit is also being made available to other landlords at a small fee which will cover costs. One early customer has already commented: “Having seen a large number of toolkits, many with large price tags, we were really pleased to see something that is focused and easy to use. It allows us to assess individual family circumstances very quickly in the presence of the customer and helps us to predict future losses in benefit for our customers thus allowing us to predict the impact and manage the risk.”