rlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/29/leeds-council-bedroom-tax-solutionrl

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.

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?