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Housing Benefit Changes

I am pleased that the government has made two changes that I asked for to the Housing Benefit proposals.

The first was to allow local authorities more discretion to pay Housing Benefit directly to Landlords. This will enable Landlords who charge a reasonable rent to be more certain that they get paid.

The second is to defer the percentile shifts for existing claimants. This will allow some market movement to occur before the new percentiles come in. It should result in a far smoother introduction of the percentile change with far fewer people having to move.

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