Bedroom Tax

The amount of housing benefit you receive is based on the number of bedrooms you have in your home and the number of people who occupy those bedrooms.

Bedroom Tax (also known as under occupancy charge or spare room subsidy) means that you will receive less in Housing Benefit or Housing Costs Element in a Universal Credit claim if you live in a Housing Association or Council property, and you are deemed to have one or more spare bedrooms.

Having one spare bedroom will mean that you will lose 14% of your entitled Housing Benefit or Housing Costs Element.

Having two or more spare bedrooms will mean that you will lose 25% of your entitled Housing Benefit or Housing Costs element.

This new tax started affecting customers with spare bedrooms in April 2013.

Who is affected by the Bedroom Tax?

You will be affected by the tax if you receive Housing Benefit or Housing Costs element in Universal Credit, you are of working age and none of the below stated exemptions apply to you.

Who is not affected by the Bedroom Tax?

Bedroom Tax will not affect you if you receive a state pension or rent a shared ownership property.
You may not be affected if you have a severely disabled child who requires their own room. In some circumstances, a severely disabled child is to be allowed their own bedroom - usually if they would seriously disrupt the sleep of another child in the property at night if they were to share a room.
You may not be affected if you are a foster carer, if you have fostered a child or have become an approved foster carer in the last 12 months - if so, you will be allocated an extra spare room.
You may not be affected if you have an adult child who is serving in the armed forces who is away on duty. They will be deemed as still living at home and therefore allocated a bedroom whilst away on operations. If you have an adult child who is living in barracks as part of pre-deployment training, they may not be affected.
You may not be affected if you have a spare room for the use of an overnight carer

What are the bedroom tax rules?

There are several different rules about what counts as a taxable spare bedroom:

Who is expected to share a room?

Adult couple
Children of both sexes under 10 would be expected to share a bedroom. If they currently do not share and they remain in separate rooms, one of their rooms will be considered as a spare bedroom.
Children of the same gender under 16 would be expected to share a bedroom.

Who can have their own bedroom?

A single adult aged 16 or over
A child who would normally share e.g. you have 3 children and 2 already share
Children who can’t share because of a medical condition or disability
A non-resident overnight carer for you or your partner

A spare bedroom is allowed for:

If a bedroom (with or without furniture) is kept free for when a child comes to stay with a parent that they do not normally live with, this room will be considered as a spare bedroom
An approved foster carer who is between placements but only for up to 52 weeks from the last placement
A newly approved foster carer for up to 52 weeks if no child is with them during that time

Bedroom Tax allowance for a child can only be claimed by one parent, even where they share access to the child.

What to do if your benefit is cut

If your housing benefit doesn’t cover your full rent, you must make up the difference yourself or you risk losing your home.

You could:

Increase your payments - if you have the money available you can use it to cover the cost of any changes and stay in your current home. The best thing you can do is pay a little extra in order to get in advance on your rent account and build up some savings for other bills. Even small amounts will mount up over the weeks.
Try to increase your income by getting a job, our employment team could help.
Rent out your spare room - You may be able to earn additional income from a lodger, but remember to check with us first to ensure your tenancy agreement allows it.
Move to a smaller home – using HomeSwapper or applying through our lettings schemes.