Stronger Together on Welfare Reform

25 September 2013

Kim Gallagher & Linda Beel

Coast & Country Tenant Panel

Transforming tenant involvement

Time for change

What’s working

Clear roles and responsibility

• Leaders – The Board

• Shapers – The Tenant Panel

• Evaluators – The Scrutiny Panel

• Code of conduct

• Action Plan

• Terms of Reference

• Corporate Planning

• Company target setting

• Leadership Team meetings

Transformed tenant involvement

Tenants lead the way

Tenants Talking to Tenants

Me and My Home

Shaping Development

Working with Others

• Go on Boro!

• Community Learning Champions

• Workers Education Authority

• Union Learn

• Other housing providers

• Womens’ Centre

• NEP

Impact on North East

• Estimated £380m loss

• ‘Cumulative loss could be £940m in 14-15

C Beatty and S Fothergill, Hitting the poorest places hardest: the local and regional impact of welfare reform, CRESR, 2013

NE -Impact on disabled

• Estimated 70,000 affected by changes to ESA

• Loss of £175m

• Estimated 33,000 affected by change from DLA to PIP

• Loss of £128m

The media

Strivers

Skivers

Hard working tax payers

Welfare scroungers

Sanctions

Employment

Unemployed Nov 12 – Jan 13

•National figure 7.9%

•North East 10.1%

•Redcar & Cleveland 12.2%

Why we needed to act!

• Impact on Tenants

• Impact on landlord

So we

• Talked to our Chief Executive

Tenants Together

Together we can make a difference

The Campaign Launch

• 72 tenant representatives, from

• 25 housing providers, representing

• 195,000 tenants

The Petition

Stop Bedroom Tax!

Tenants Together

Cutting the housing benefit of social housing tenants with ‘spare’ bedrooms will hit the poor, the vulnerable and the disabled hardest

Coast & Country’s Tenant Panel is harnessing the voice and power of 100,000 social housing tenants to launch a mass protest to stop Bedroom Tax.

Join us in our campaign and help get our voice heard in Parliament.

Together we can make a difference!

Outcomes

• The Petition – over 4,000 names so far

• Local councillors lobbying for change

• Tenants Working Together Facebook

• Newsletters

• Letters to MPs

• Local MP to raise the issues at the Lib-Dem Conference

Lib-Dem Conference

The conference ‘Condemns the bedroom tax for ‘discriminating against the most vulnerable in society

They also said:

‘There is something going wrong when standards of living go forward for battery hens, but backwards for people’

Following on …

• Radio interviews

• TV interviews

• Newspaper articles

• Invited to other housing associations

• Speaking at rallies

• Revised allocations policy regarding bedroom tax arrears

• Supporting Credit Unions

• Local Food bank

• Personal credit options including

Developing Digital Inclusion

Questions

• What is your landlord doing about Welfare Reform?

• What are you doing as tenant representatives?

• What do you think is the way forward?

What you can do

Talk to:

•your Chief Executive!

•other involved tenants

•your M. P.

•Local councillors

Consequences