While stressing that every part of the sector is working tirelessly to protect tenants, the CIH warns Liz Truss that without sufficient targeted help homelessness numbers will inevitably rise.

The letter highlights the financial advice and income maximisation support offered by many social landlords alongside their efforts to find ways, with limited local resources, to give the most vulnerable tenants fuel vouchers and other forms of discretionary support.

“However, there is a limit to what the housing sector can do. The pressures are so great that many households now have negative budgets, even after all avenues of support have been exhausted. Many social housing providers are themselves challenged by above inflation cost increases and limits on their income,” says lead signatory CIH CEO Gavin Smart.

Specifically, the NFA and fellow signatories to the letter are asking the new admistration to:

• Bring forward the planned uprating of benefits from next April to this October – before the recent spike in inflation basic benefits were worth 11% less than a decade ago.  
• Limit deductions from Universal Credit for prior overpayments / sanctions so that they are only used in exceptional and limited circumstances.
• Remove the benefit cap and two-child limit because both undermine social housing tenants’ ability to sustain their tenancy and disproportionately affect women and children.
• Restore local housing allowance (LHA) rates to at least the 30th percentile and return to annual uprating to prevent increasing numbers of private renters becoming homeless as costs rise.
• Prevent energy companies from forcibly switching customers to prepayment meters during the winter months, thus protecting anyone who falls into arrears.
• Commit to bring forward additional funding for energy efficiency measures in homes.

“NFA members and our colleagues across the sector believe they can help tenants weather this crisis, but we can’t do this without the right policy and resource support from the centre,” said Eamon McGoldrick.

“This letter puts the case clearly and we hope to see its suggestions fed into the planning now underway by the new administration.”

Read the full letter here.