The Tenant Participation Advisory Service is pressing the government to make sure tenants will not lose housing benefit if they are paid for being members of housing association boards.
The Housing Corporation is poised to allow registered social landlords to pay board members and guidance is being drawn up by the corporation, the National Housing Federation and Hacas Chapman Hendy (HT 25 April, page 7).

TPAS chief executive Phil Morgan met Housing Corporation chair Baroness Dean yesterday and will meet housing minister Lord Rooker on Tuesday to discuss the issue. Morgan said: "We can't have a situation where the poorest people on the board get no benefit from it but the richest do."

The meetings come just over a month after Dean's 29 April letter to work and pensions secretary Andrew Smith asking him to change the housing benefit rules so that paid board members would not lose benefit. Dean suggested that money earned from civic duties should be disregarded when calculating housing benefit.

Morgan applauded Dean's suggestion but said he was willing to consider other ideas that the government proposed.

But a housing association source said: "This is too little, too late. The Housing Corporation wants to make an announcement on paying boards in a month or so, but the benefit rules will take years to change."

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman reiterated that "income is taken into account when calculating benefit entitlement" and said there were no plans yet for new disregards.

An Office of the Deputy Prime Minister spokeswoman said: "We understand the difficulty of benefits disregard levels but, as regulator of social landlords, the Housing Corporation is in the lead on this."

Source

Housing Today