[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/29/leeds-council-bedroom-tax-solution[/url

There's more than one way to skin a cat and just because its a "box room" doesn't mean to say its a "bedroom" like HM Coalition Government would prefer to believe - Leeds City Council is reclassifying (downwards) the number of bedrooms in 800 council houses where the so-called bedroom is of a size that is smaller than the generally accepted size of 70sqft - generally accepted insofar as for generations anything smaller than that has been named a "box room" in tenancy agreements but for the new Housing Benefit rules this is denied, any additional room COULD be classified as a spare bedroom presumably the only criteria being that you can fit a single bed in it.

Leeds City Council will now reclassify small rooms, ground floor rooms used as bedrooms and rooms which act as access into other rooms all as "non-specific" rooms - seems sensible especially as the cost of collecting the arrears of tenants who have had housing benefits reduced exceeds the cost of the savings of those reductions.

Fairly typically though you only have to point a reporters notebook underneath a Tory politicians nose for a snide comment to be issued forth, step forward Councillor Barry Anderson ""[iIt does not solve the core of the problem. There needs to more advice for people on housing benefits … hardworking, good tenants may lose out.[/i" Barry wouldn't be suggesting that those on housing benefit are NOT hardworking good tenants would he, surely no-one would make such a wild assumption ?

More than 80% (I cannot recall, off the top of my head, the exact figure over the 80) of all housing benefit payments are to people IN WORK.

People like that councillor are either seriously lacking in basic information or playing the IDS game of trying to use disinformation to play divide and rule.

If anyone's interested, he's on Twitter: @barryanderson19

He says that he knows that more than 80% of all housing benefit is paid to people who are in work.

I'm currently waiting for a response to the question of whether he was misquoted in the article.

How undemocratic. Parliament has passed legislation with a specific purpose and this council are trying to find loopholes to negate that purpose.

Poor form. I'll be writing to my local MP about this.

You'll be pleased to hear that the Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee responsible for the DWP have called IDS to appear in June to explain his (mis)use of statistics.

I'll be setting my Sky+ box for that one

Good luck

Well indeed.

It could be amusing, couldn't it?

The council was democratically elected.

Only part of the point about this is that its probably very simple to drive a double decker bus through most of the on-the-hoof policies so recently introduced - the way it seems to work now is that some "think tank" of reactionary buffoons are locked in a room and told not to come out until they've thought of a way to extract blood from a stone, when released some time later they've come up with a list of suggestions, some more barmy than the others, which are then tested by "leaking" to certain members of the press - the ones that don't result in protest marches down Whitehall get quickly written into legislation and they sort out the legality of it all sometime later when challenges are made in the courts.

Only part of that last paragraph was sarcastic.

Nice one.

I look forward to his reply and back pedal.

Just thought I'd check out Councillor Andersons ward, turns out that he lives very close to me

and the area that he represents is, how can I say this, not exactly over-endowed with council house tenants, there are some its true but its fair to say that his area of representation is not exactly deprived inner city, more "the Kensington of Leeds" (if only to set an image in your mind).

Coincidentally his ward is fully contained within the bounds of Greg Mulholland's Parliamentary constituency...

Question asked ... wait for reply

See tax legislation and PWC for more details...

Edited for accuracy

Loopholes?
If you want to surcharge for extra bedrooms, surely you need to define what constitutes a bedroom?
In the case of Leeds, they are merely saying that if it's too small to be a bedroom, it's not a bedroom.
Anyway, it's in Leeds ... do you live there?

He was very quick to respond to my initial question, with a nice, straightforward "yes", but must have been busy since I asked whether he'd been misquoted and whether he old clarify.

This government is THE worst I can remember for coming up with ideas that are basically unworkable or even down right illegal (Mrs May leading the way on that one). At least under Thatcher while you might disagree with what they were doing they gave the impression of basic competence. And when they did screw up it was still a time where ministers resigned!

IDS will when he appears before that committee just do his usual and shout louder.

God knows what would have happened had he won an election when he was leader of the Tory party.

I would disagree however with the notion that it is deliberate that things progress as you say where they legislate and then sort out the legalities afterwards. I really do believe that they do not think things through and it is basic incompetence that leaves them open to legal challenge.

IDS and Co certainly have an agenda IMO and it is a nasty one but I don't think they are competent enough to see their own legislation through without being caught out.

I've told the story before, but ticking on for two years ago, when negotiations were taking place with government over its planned changed to the public service pensions schemes, the lead government negotiators were Francis Maude and Danny Alexander.

The various unions had balloted for industrial action on the issue and, having received the results, were busy setting dates etc.

The government suggested that they delay the date of any action. It was explained to them that, under employment legislation that had been enacted by Conservative administrations of yore, this could not be done. Action has to be taken within a set, limited time after the result of any ballot (30 days, IIRC), or there has to be a new ballot (a costly exercise).

Mr Maude, who is a lawyer apparently, suggested that they could 'suspend' the law for a week or so.

It was suggested to him that you cannot just 'suspend' law when convenient.

He sent away a civil servant to check.

The civil servant returned to confirm that no, you cannot simply 'suspend' a law when it takes your fancy.

This is the stuff of [iThe Thick of It[/i.

Armando Iannucci must've thought all his birthdays had come at once when this bunch came to power. He should be eternally grateful for them writing his scripts on his behalf. Talk about life imitating art

Nah, Major, Blair and brown were all capable of coming up with some poor legislation, they were just better at putting a coat of gloss on it.

I don't think any of those governments had to actually back track on their legislation or rush out amendments anything like as often as this one which was the point I was making. Things like selling off woodlands and the pasty tax spring to mind.

All those governments enacted poor legislation but at least they seemed to know how to do it!

I don't recall them having a vote of no confidence in their own Queens' speech either.
Or having to enlist the opposition to push a bill through that they couldn't get support for in their own party.
Bloody hopeless.
No wonder they haven't won a majority in a general election for two decades.

The last government were experts in the art of leaking ideas, the ones that got the headlines and people outraged got binned, this mob are just not as well schooled in the art.

[urlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/30/grant-shapps-benefit-reform-watchdog-uksa-_n_3357945.html?utm_hp_ref=uk[/url

Grant Shapps only slightly misinterpreted "benefit cheats" numbers too.

I suppose its easy to mistake the number 20,000 and read 900,000 instead though - if your incompetent or a spiv.

Some of the stuff this lot do is done not because they didn't think to test it out because it might be unpopular - they don't care about that. They still end up having to have a rethink because they made a balls up of drafting the legislation in the first place and the rethink isn't always to withdraw it either but to try and fix it.