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Last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, delivered his Autumn Statement. The Statement is an opportunity for the Government to update the House of Commons on the state of the economy, as well as to announce tax and spending decisions. In this post we look at what the Statement will mean for Cyrenians’ residents, housing, and homelessness provision in Cambridge.

Local housing allowance unfrozen

The most promising news in the Autumn statement was the announcement that local housing allowance (LHA) rates would be raised to cover the bottom 30% of market rents. Local housing allowance rates, which are used to determine how much you can claim in benefits for help paying rent, have been frozen since 2020. This freeze has meant that LHA has remained static as rents have increased. As a result, in the first quarter of 2023 just 5% of private rental properties in the UK would be covered by LHA for benefit recipients.1

The increase will come into effect from April 2024 and is good news for Cyrenians residents. The limited availability of social housing means most of our residents have little choice but to move into the private sector and the unfreezing of LHA will go some way to improving the accessibility of private rented accommodation.

Increased benefit sanctions

The Autumn Statement included a number of promises to reform aspects of the welfare system, including the fit note process and Work Capability Assessment (WCA), and stronger sanctions for benefit claimants.

Some types of benefit, such as Universal Credit, can be stopped or reduced if the person claiming does not comply with certain conditions, for example, missing a mandatory meeting or interview.

This causes us particular concern as previous analysis has found people experiencing homelessness may be twice as likely to face sanctions.2 We see the devastating results first-hand when our residents are unable to pay their rent or buy their weekly shopping and fall into a cycle of arrears and debt as a result of benefit sanctions.

Research from the University of Salford has shown that the threat of sanctions can have serious impacts on mental and physical health and can prevent people being able to effectively look for work.3 In the light of this, we hope to see the government take seriously the deficiencies of sanctions and to fulfil their commitment to expand Individual Placement and Support (IPS), an employment service which works within community mental health teams, to an additional 384,000 people and NHS Talking Therapies to an additional 100,000 people over the next five years.4

Our mission is to support and empower those who are homeless or vulnerable to homelessness and to make a positive difference to the quality of their lives. While this does include support for residents to enter training, employment, and other meaningful activity, we want to see welfare reform that helps people into appropriate and sustainable work without pushing others back into rough sleeping and homelessness.

Institute of Fiscal Studies: Housing quality and affordability for lower-income households report. ↩︎Batty, E., Beatty, C., Casey, R., Foden, M., McCarthy, L. & Reeve, K. (2015) Homeless people’s experiences of welfare conditionality and benefit sanctions. London: Crisis. ↩︎Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change. ↩︎Government Response to the Work Capability Assessment: Activities and Descriptors Consultation. ↩