Unruly private tenants could lose benefit

Councils could be given the powers to reduce housing benefit and other "housing related" payments to private tenants to encourage responsible behaviour, the paper suggests.

But housing professionals had strong reservations about the plans and homelessness charity Shelter criticised the proposals as "very dubious".

The paper says: "Local authorities could be given the powers to reduce housing benefit for unruly tenants as an alternative, or as part of the process of pursing an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. Full benefit would be restored once the tenant's behaviour had improved."

Shelter head of policy Nicola Bacon said: "This is not the way to deal with the problem. Using housing benefit as a sanction is very dubious, any legal action should go through the courts." She added the government should be very careful about penalising one group of people because of the particular tenure they live in.

She called for "all sensible approaches to dealing with anti-social behaviour" to apply across the board and not just to tenants in social housing. She said: "Private sector tenants have very little rights as it is."

Chartered Institute of Housing policy officer Merron Simpson said she had reservations about the proposal. She said: "Removing housing benefit is not a good way of addressing anti-social behaviour because it simply moves the problem on."

She added the denial of housing benefit should not be a punishment for behaving badly. Simpson said: "Extreme anti-social behaviour is verging on the criminal and that should be dealt with via the criminal system."

However, an Association of Residential Letting Agents spokesman said: "Anything that gives landlords teeth against bad tenants has to be good news." He added that responsible private sector landlords already evict anti-social tenants.