Month: October 2011

Home insulation is well worth getting! There are various grants and offers for discounted Home insulation at the moment. Look on your local council’s website.

For the Greater Manchester area there’s a website called Get Me Toasty that gives you information about insulation available

If you want to buy some insulation then B&Q have lots of types to chose from.
It’s well worth adding insulation to your loft space if you’ve not got the full recommended depth of 270mm. You should also ensure your loft trap door is insulated and use clips to make a tight seal.

It’s not called Housing benefit anymore. it’s called Local housing allowance.

It’s now calculated on how many rooms you’re entitled to. This varies with the number of people in your household, and your age.

You can calculate this yourself if you know:
The numbers of how many people live in your household, including family members, non-dependants, boarders and sub-tenants
to know whether you are entitled to an additional bedroom for someone not living with you, but who provides necessary overnight care for you or your partner
the postcode of the property you rent or want to rent, or the local authority where it’s situated

You should know all these things – they’re not hard. If you’re looking to move to an area use the local authority option. If there’s more than one that it might come under it’ll show you both.

If you’re a couple or single then you don’t need to use the bedroom calculator as for couples and single people claiming under certain circumstances the number of bedrooms you are entitled to is fixed.

Calculate the number of bedrooms you’re entitled to claim houseing benefit (LHA) for
The calculator for housing benefit lets you say what authority or postcode and then they tell you how much help you could have with your rent. For a couple with one child in Oldham it works out two bedrooms and the rate for that is £109.62 per week. To work out how much a month you X52 and divide by 12. This works out at £475.02 a month. It’s useful to work this out yourself as most rentals are advertised on a per month rent basis.

If you want to see all the rent rates for different size propertys in different areas then you can visit this page that allows you to investigate all the local housing allowance rates for different bedroom numbers.
It shows by month so you can research older levels and see if it’s gone down.

The aim of changing the housing benefit rules was to try and bring rents down.

For my local authority for October 2011 the rates are:
Shared Accommodation Rate:
£60.00 per week
One Bedroom Rate:
£92.31 per week
Two Bedrooms Rate:
£109.62 per week
Three Bedrooms Rate:
£126.92 per week
Four Bedrooms Rate:
£173.08 per week

BBC is running a sensational piece of writing listing the ways that changes to the housing market could help.
Eight radical solutions to the housing crisis

Encourage elderly out of big houses.
Freestyle planning
Contain population growth
Force landlords to sell or let empty properties
Ban second homes
Guarantee mortgage payments
Live with extended family
Build more council homes

Are any of these really radical? The idea of containing population growth is an interesting one as the world approaches 7 billion. Does this include banning further immigration? What sort of restrictions could you fairly impose on the existing UK population without also stopping additional people coming in to the UK?
Some people already live with extended families. Intergeneratonal living does happen in the UK. Perhaps all the younger relatives of the lonely old people could move in to the big houses they’re accused of having. What is too big? Is a three bedroom house too big for one person? And how could you encourage people to move from their too big homes? Many old people hang on to their houses as they want to preserve the memories they had of living there, the family drama and events thats shape us are steeped into the homes we live in.

The two most sensible and easily achievable ideas are to force empty homes to be used and to build more homes. But genuinely affordable ones where rents are at a level that working and supporting a family without needing government support would be good.

You’ve got the keys to your new house so what should you do?

Read the meters (You should do this at the place you’re leaving too!) – use a digital camera to get a photo of the meter readings in case of any dispute)

Change the locks. Most people don’t bother but you should really put new barrels in. It’s not complicated and can give you complete peace of mind. There’s millions of keys that get lent to people (Family, cat sitters, even workmen! that don’t get returned.. so avoid any potential problems by just changing the locks)

Get low energy lightbulbs for every room. Buy a bag full in advance. The sellers might leave all their lightbulbs or they might take them all. It’s better to have a few spare bulbs than be in the dark.

Fit a carbon monoxide detector too. They’re about £14 from Amazon and could save your life!

Check the smoke alarms.
Your local fire brigade will come and fit you shiny new ones for free – find their number online or in the yellow pages – Do not ring the 999 number for them!