With the Government's recent shake-up of the benefit system and the implementation of the widely-dubbed 'Bedroom Tax', the Curo Group, one of the largest social landlords in Bath and North East Somerset, have laid out several resources to help customers understand how they are to be affected by the changes.

As of this month, several changes will begin, including the end of Council Tax Benefit and the changes to the housing benefit which will see several households lose portions of their claim due to under-occupancy, this change, nicknamed the Bedroom Tax, looks set to affect around 80% of households receiving housing benefits in B&NES.

Across the seven local authorities in which Curo offers accommodation, their tenants look set to collectively lose £950,000 in benefits each year. Living in an under-occupied house – that is, a house with spare rooms, will mean a loss in housing benefit.

This is based on the idea of an adult/couple having one bedroom and then any children under ten (fifteen, if the same gender) sharing a room.

Under these guidelines, a couple with two sons, aged fifteen and thirteen, with their own bedrooms, in a three bedroom house, are considered to have a spare room. The penalty for this is a 14% reduction in received rent benefit for one spare room and 25% for two or more.

This will also affect families with shared child custody. The parent that doesn't receive child benefit, but who has bedrooms for when their children visit, will be classed as being under-occupied and will be affected by this penalty.

According to Curo, across the seven local authorities in the South West, one in nine tenants affected have expressed a desire to move into smaller housing.

Although Curo has sufficient numbers of one and two bedroom properties, it cannot guarantee that those properties will be in areas that would be suitable for the tenants, such a move could affect school places and family situations.

There is also still a waiting list of around 12,000 people waiting for social housing before this could take place. Curo is promoting the idea of exchanging and swapping of properties to rehouse those that would like to move, if this is something that you would be interested in, please contact your Curo landlord to discuss the possibility.

Currently, the penalty only affects working age households, those of a pensionable age are exempt as are armed forces personnel, to find out if you are affected and how, contact your local authority. There are few exemptions to this rule, with local authorities being given the power to hand out a means-tested, discretionary payment to those deemed in need, however, these boundaries and amounts are decided by individual local authorities and may differ across the country.

In addition to the change on housing benefit, Council Tax benefit is being eradicated from April of this year and is being replaced with a localised Council Tax Support scheme. This will affect all working age benefit claimants.

Each local authority will create their own scheme, which means that there will no longer be automatic 100% Council Tax support for those on certain benefits. Here in B&NES, Council Tax has been frozen, but this will mean that those who were formally receiving the benefit will now have to pay.

For example, a single person living in a two bedroom property in the B&NES area receiving standard Job Seekers Allowance of around £70 per week, would be paying out £20 a week of that to Council Tax and under-occupancy penalties bills.

Curo are offering their tenants a range of resources to help them cope with these changes and the changes coming up in the next few months.

The introduction of the Benefit Cap, which affects housing benefit until Universal Credit is brought in, will see a benefit cap of £500 per week for families and £350 per week for single residents or couples.

This benefit will not apply to households currently receiving disability living allowance or working tax credits and it is estimated that around twenty households in B&NES will be affected by this.

Also coming into force in July is a change to disability benefits, these will be replaced by Personal Independence Payments, which hold a different criteria to the previous benefit. It is likely to affect around one-third of claimants.

Universal Credit will be introduced in October, this one payment replaces six current benefits and will be paid monthly in arrears into the claimant's bank account and will be handled completely digitally. Currently, 60% of people in Curo housing do not have access to the internet or a bank account and so provisions are being looked into by the group to help acquaint people with both those things.

To help tenants with their budgeting and to prepare for these changes, Curo has teamed up with Bath University and Bristol Credit Union to offer courses and advice with household management on the monthly payment. They also have a range of welfare reforms advisors available on their hotlines that can help point people in the right direction to access the help they need, whether it's setting up a bank account or just getting online to be able to handle their benefits claims.

There is also a facebook page that has been set up to help explain the changes in the benefit system and be a point of contact with the Curo Group which can be found at http://www.facebook.com/">www.facebook.com/

benefitsbigchange They can also be emailed via: [email protected]">[email protected] or tenants can telephone: 01225 366239.