That promised post on Local Housing Allowance, from November 2008, with additional comments to bring it up to date.

The post below was written shortly after LHA had been rolled out nationally:
Taken from posts on the HBInfo forums, an amalgamation of points from two posts, to give some context to my reply...

So, six months into LHA and what do we find:-
-LHA rates at a level that even those with above average salaries would struggle to afford.
-Landlords looking up the lha/direct website and pushing rents for even sub-standard property up to the median.
-Landlords beginning to report increased incidences of rent arrears and apparently bumping up the level of deposits to try and cover losses (and all this before the Christmas and winter fuel bills start to compete with payment of rent for LHA recipients)
-BRMAs that have been set too broadly causing people to be priced out of their own communities.
-Localities and LRRs only introduced in the past year or so likely to be reviewed as a result of the post-Hefferenan guidance from the Rent Service, creating a fresh round of winners and losers (guidance which is readily available to all on the Rent Service website).
-Apparently national LHA expenditure levels in the first six months so high that Treasury is beginning to lean on DWP for an explanation and probably demanding that they be reined in, and quickly.
The main point is though that LHA appears to be causing a surge in expenditure well beyond DWP projections and will continue to increase as landlords bump rents up to and beyond the LHA level.  The DWP consistently said this would not happen and that it did not feature as a problem in their evaluation of the pathfinders.

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My reply.

I would suggest that this would be because it didn't happen in the Pathfinders...

Remember, the biggest change between the pathfinder scheme and the final scheme was that the excess that was paid to the claimant was capped at £15. This removed the incentive for claimants to find a property that was more than £15 below the LHA cap. This in turn removes the incentive for landlords to charge less than £15 below the cap per week to encourage tenants to move into their property, rather than the property next door.

So, the two situations outlined above would theoretically work like this:

Pathfinder scheme:

LHA set at £120 pw

Property A, rent £100 pw, V. nice condition
Property B, rent £90 pw, V. good condition
Property C, rent £80 pw, OK condition

Claimant takes property C, other landlords find their property is harder to rent, drop prices slightly, rents drop, LHA figures drop, cost of HB goes down, everyone is happy, (except the landlords).

Final Scheme:

LHA set at £120 pw

Property A, rent £100 pw, V. nice condition
Property B, rent £90 pw, V. good condition
Property C, rent £80 pw, OK condition

Claimant will now take property A in preference, other landlords find that low cost of property is not an incentive to rent their property, increase prices, LHA figures rise, cost of HB goes up, only landlords are happy.

Of course this is all very simplified, but I believe is a reasonable estimation of what is/was happening on the ground.

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My Solution to the Problem

The largest problem with the Pathfinder scheme was that it could be seen to encourage deliberate overcrowding of smaller properties so that the amount of excess that the claimant received was disproportionately high, thus stopping them from looking for larger properties that were a more suitable size.

If the government had really wanted to produce a properly functioning Housing Benefit scheme that had the desired effect of allowing claimants the security of knowing how much Housing Benefit they would receive, whilst encouraging Landlords to keep rents low, the following approach would have got results much closer to those desired than either of the two schemes tried thus far.

The amount of benefit to be paid would be the lower of either the rate for the number of bedrooms needed for the family size or the number of bedrooms in the property and also remove the cap on the LHA excess. 

This would solve a number of problems with one stroke, by help to lower the Housing Benefit bill, provide claimants with the stability of a known maximum amount of benefit and a genuine choice of properties, provide Landlords with a known rent level, and keep the scheme easy to administer.

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An update on the situation at LHA is now (May 2011)

Relatively recently, the Government decided that the Housing Benefit bill was still far to high, and that Housing Benefit could be used as a tool to haelp lower rental prices.

This lead to two main changes from April this year.  The first was to remove the remaining £15 excess.  This will have saved an awful lot of money.  If a council had 5000 LHA claims, all paying out the maximum excess, this measure alone will have saved £7500 instantly.  I still feel that the points above stand, and that leaving the uncapped LHA excess would help to drive down rental prices.  This will still not have had as fast an effect as the second measure implemented by the government.

The second measure implemented was the change from using the median rent level as the figure for LHA, to using the third quartile figure.  This measure in itself more than wiped out most excess payments, and so the cost of rewarding claiminants for finding cheaper property would be reduced anway.

Further thoughts on #copyright

As I had thought it would, the discussion on #copyright has continued throughout the day.  I have mostly just been replying to @graemelambert of the Pirate Party who asked why I thought copyright should be extendable.

He also stated that he felt that 10 years was long enough for an author to take advantage of their work.

I had no ready replys to these questions, except to suggest that series of books such as The Wheel of Time, or Patrick O'Brien's novels are made possiable by the application of a long lasting copyright.

Having considered this angle a little more I suspect that fictional characters may be protected by Interlectual Property rights,  which I suspect Graeme may like less than copyright, although I am happy to admit to this only being a suspicion based on nothing more than his being a member of the Pirate Party, and my belief that this is the party line on such things.

In any case, I have come up with a stronger reason for allowing copyright to be extended. The rights of a creator to control how their works are used. Once again, I cannot see that Graeme will agree with me. If an author creates a fantastic new story, say J K Rowling and the Harry Potter series, is it fair that just by the film studios waiting the 10 years he suggests copyright should last, they can create a multi million dollar film, with no money going to the person that initially created the universe they are using?

I believe that the proposal that I put forward for copyright reform helps to ensure that this would not become an issue. It doesn't just hand this to the creator on a plate. They have to work to protect their rights, but they are available to protect if they want to. It also makes exploitation of the creators harder, as they can just fail to reregister their copyright if they are getting no benefit from their work.

I again seem to have written this rather too late, and whilst tired. I hope it makes sense and gets what I felt needed clarification over, rather than muddying the water further.

Once again, sleep well!
@MrDrem

#Copyright and my solution to the problem

The blame for this post can be laid firmly at the door of @DavidAllenGreen.  It was his tweet that lead me to consider how copyright works, and if there is a better way forward.

Given the time of night that it was asked (note the time of this post and weep for me) there were a few responses.  I expect more will show up later on, but of those there this early in the morning, most seemed able to agree on a couple of things:

1. Copyright is needed in some form
2. Current Copyright is not totally suitable for its purpose, generally, the time it protects works for is too long.

I have to say that I agree with the basic premise of copyright.  If you create something, you deserve to have the recognition and money from that item for at least a while. 

It should be up to the creator of the work how and by whom it's distributed, but how long should they have this control for, and how long should they be able to stop other people using and expanding on their basic works for? A further consideration is that if I create a work that can only be copywritten (not sure how copyright declines), it is important that the length of time that I have to make money off of it ensures that its worth me doing it in the first place.


I suggested in the discussion that copyright should encourage those creative types to allow their works to 'go free' after a period of time, by making the period of protection less with each time the protection was taken out. The idea being that from the time a work is first published it would be automatically protected for a number of years. I suggested 10 years on Twitter, but a little more thought has lead me to thinking that maybe 15 might be better. Following this period, a work would have to be registered with a central body, who would be able to keep track of copyright, and provide a central base for knowledge. I believe that the British Library has shown an interest in this sort of thing, but most likely not in this form. There would be a small charge for registering a work to continue to ensure that it was kept in copyright, which should cover costs of running the scheme. Each time of registration would cut the time registered exponentially. This would give the following protections:

1. 15 years from 1st publication *without* the need to register
2. 8 further years taking the total to 23 years following 1st publication.
3. 4 further years taking the total to 27 years following 1st publication.
4. 2 further years taking the total to 29 years following 1st publication.
5. 1 further year taking the total to 30 years following 1st publication.

From this point onwards, the copyright could then be resought on an annual basis.  I would remove the maximum period limit that is there now, and make it so that only the original creator of the work could renew the copyright.  At some point it will become uneconomic to continue to renew the copyright, and it would then head into the public domain.

Joint creators would both be able to register a claim on a work, which would then be protected in joint names for as long as each party kept up its registration.  If a party let its registration lapse, then the protection would be continued in the remaining names until they too let their protection lapse.

The death of a copyright holder would not immediately return a work to the public domain.  This would only happen at the end of its current registration period, at which point as they could not renew the registration, it would pass down as per that of joint parties.

The biggest remaining issue that I can see with this is that protection for characters in an ongoing series could end before the final book is written.  I would therefore suggest that protection for ongoing characters like this would start from the publication of the last new work including them by the original author.  Thus if books are published at years 0, 5, 10 and 15, the automatic protection for the characters in the book would continue for a further 15 years, even if no more was done with the first book.

This scheme places a good amount of control of creations in the hands of their creators, whilst allowing a sensible time for them to exploit their works.  Taking the example of an author, I would envisage them signing up to deal with a publisher to publish the book for 15 years at the start.  Few publishers would want to bet on the life of the author, or the authors not falling out with them during the 15 years, and not renewing the copyright.  However, 15 years should be long enough for a company to make a good return on its investment in new creators.

I'm sure that there are many further niggles to this system that I've not spotted, but your thoughts, and constructive criticism of this will be hugely appreciated.  If you have any queries about my proposals, let me know those too, and I'll do my best to formulate an answer for you!

Sleep Well!
MrDrem

First Blog!

Well, here goes nothing.

I've been meaning to start a blog to ask the detailed questions that I have about some aspects of discussions that I find happening around me, and questions that I have from events going on in the world.

Generally where I have a view, I'm hoping for feedback on it.  My positions aren't set in stone, but I do like to play devils advocate a bit.

I'm always interested in others positions, but would ask you to give me something to go on in your comments, not just a "you're wrong!" Please let me know /why/ I'm wrong!

Posts that I know are coming up are ones on #copyright (thanks to @DavidAllenGreen for this one), things the 138 @UKUnCutters in Fortnum and Masons could have done to stop them being arrested, and an old one that I wrote ages ago about changes to Housing Benefit, and how it Local Housing Allowance could have been improved given my experiences of it from the assessment side.

Thanks in advance for your support and comments!
@MrDrem