ROOF Blog

Think tank Policy Exchange has said that giving social housing tenants access to the controversial right-to-move scheme would help break up pockets of deprivation. The think tank argues that concentrations of social housing have led to a spiral of underachievement and joblessness. It wants to give people the change to move, initially once every five years, to another property of the same value in an area of the tenants’ choice. The report conceded that it was ‘plausible’ that up to 1.5 million people could move in the first tranche, at a cost of several billion pounds to the taxpayer.

The government unveiled its plans to get one million people off benefits and back to work yesterday. The plan, to ‘transform’ the lives of people currently on benefits, was launched by work and pensions minister James Purnell who said benefit claimants would have to play their part in the economy either with some form of work or in preparing themselves to find work in the future, or face losing some state payments. Only carers, jobless parents of very young children or severely disabled people would be exempt.