Mansions for scroungers: we pay £16m a year to keep families in luxury
SUPER-size families living in local authority “mansions” have become Britain’s biggest scroungers, raking in £6million a year from the taxpayer.
One couple with 14 children get their £1,700-a-month rent paid by the local council and receive another £50,000 a year in benefits.
In another house, a family of eight adults and nine children live in luxury.
While most of us struggle to meet rent or mortgage payments, an investigation by the Sunday Express has exposed a shocking catalogue of shameless families on the fiddle up and down the country.
We discovered six, seven and eight-bedroom properties used to accommodate huge
households, all at taxpayers’ expense. Our inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act to 108 town halls found the average cost of providing accommodation to the biggest family in each council area was £17,500 a year or £1,450 a month.
It means the cost across all 335 councils in England and Wales is close to £6million. Margaret Wilson, 46, her partner Eric Jamieson, 39, and their 14 children live in an eight-bedroom house in Newcastle’s West End.
Ms Wilson has 17 children in all, though three have grown up and left home. She said she had no regrets about the huge cost to the taxpayer of keeping her family.
She said: “They have called me the mother of all scroungers but I couldn’t care less. I have 17 kids and 14 of them still living here. We need the room.”
In addition to the rent, the family also claims tax credit of £619 a week, child benefit of £165, carer’s allowance of £58, income support of £37 and housing benefit of £61 – a yearly total of almost £50,000.
The rent is paid by Newcastle City Council under a scheme called Local Housing Allowance. Families can use a complex formula based on the number of adults and the age and sexes of their children to claim entitlement to a house with a specific number of bedrooms.
The scheme has left councils struggling to find homes big enough to house families with a large number of children, and means they often rent more luxurious properties than would be offered to a smaller family. Last night Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Theresa May said: “It is clear that Labour have completely botched the implementation of the Local Housing Allowance. Week by week we have fresh examples of families on benefits living in million-pound mansions.
“We cannot go on like this. A Conservative government would review the whole system to make sure that it is fair and transparent. Families on benefits should not be able to live in houses that would be unaffordable to the majority.”
Our investigation uncovered 19 houses with six, seven or eight bedrooms. In the London borough of Barnet eight adults and nine children share a five-bedroom house which costs £3,146 a month. Seven London councils admitted paying more than £3,000 a month to put up extended families, including £4,117 a month for a six-bed home in Wandsworth for a family of 12.
Brighton and Hove Council is spending £2,106 a month keeping a seven-strong family in a five-bedroom house. And in Bristol two adults and 11 children have been housed in a seven-bedroom home at a cost of £2,063 a month.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is staggering to see what huge families the welfare state is supporting. It is a serious concern that in some cases such massive families may be a result of the benefit system’s guarantees to keep paying out no matter what.”
