Council evicts family from temporary accommodation for failing to attend viewing 180 miles away

Liz Wyatt from HASL said: “There is no justification for evicting this young family with one day’s notice in the middle of an extreme heatwave and soaring COVID-19 cases.

“We are deeply concerned and horrified by Waltham Forest Council’s treatment of this vulnerable family and their decision to pursue this harmful eviction.

“Why won’t Waltham Forest Council simply do the right thing and leave this family in their temporary accommodation where they are settled?”

Commenting on the case, Louise Mitchell, cabinet member for housing and homelessness prevention at Waltham Forest Council, said: “Waltham Forest Council works hard to provide accommodation for residents who request assistance.

“Our preference is to house every household locally. However, demand for housing in London far outstrips supply and we regret that it is not always possible to place people in the borough.

“Alongside our duty to offer accommodation to those in need, we also have a duty to make sure council taxpayers’ money is being used in a sustainable and reasonable way and that we can continue to provide the essential day-to-day services on which all our residents rely.

“We must follow the government’s benefits cap policy when we make any offer of accommodation and we must consider the financial circumstances of each household to ensure the offer is affordable and sustainable for them. “The freeze on the rent we can pay under the Local Housing Allowance makes it very challenging to find affordable accommodation in London. We cannot comment in more detail on individual cases.”

In a wave of welfare announcements during the early days of the pandemic, Rishi Sunak announced that the government would be ending a four-year freeze on LHA rates and restoring them to cover the cheapest third of rents within the government’s ‘broad rental market areas’.

However, it was revealed in last November’s Spending Review that LHA rates would once again be frozen from April 2021, with the Office of Budget Responsibility stating that this would see “rents falling back below the 30th percentile of local rents over time” as rents continue to increase.

A government spokesperson said: “We’ve taken unprecedented action to protect renters during this pandemic, including increasing Local Housing Allowance rates significantly in 2020/21, which has boosted support by almost £1bn, benefiting more than one million households by £600 on average over the year.

“We are maintaining rates at the same cash level in 2021/22, meaning support for private renters is still substantially higher than it was before the pandemic.”