Poor Mojo's Newswire

The government's official blurb says the spare bedroom tax is intended to "contain growing housing benefit expenditure, encourage greater mobility within the social rented sector, make better use of available social housing stock, and improve work incentives for working-age claimants". It makes rules on housing let by councils and housing associations even tighter than similar regulations covering privately rented accommodation – and in that sense, drastically weakens the "social" aspect of so-called social housing.

The new regime is exacting, to say the least. If you're a separated or divorced couple who share the care of your children, only one of you will be allowed extra rooms; if the other keeps a bedroom for the kids, it'll still be deemed "spare". If a family contains two children of the same sex under 16, they must share, and the same will apply to mixed-sex children under 10. As the Holdens have discovered, whether a disabled child is entitled to a room of their own is a matter of some uncertainty, apparently being left to local authorities.

There will be no exceptions for foster carers, who might need extra space for children they look after. Even if a family or couple has had a house or flat kitted out with must-have facilities for someone who's disabled, if they're deemed to be under-occupying, they'll still be penalised (to help such people pay the rent, the government has set aside an extra L30m a year for discretionary payments, though help will be given on a temporary basis, with no kind of hard entitlement – and besides, next year's extra funding set aside to deal with the fall-out from housing benefit cuts amounts to just 6% of what the government intends to save).