When Councillor John Clare was campaigning for election in May, he promised to do what he could to help people hit by the ‘bedroom tax’.
Shortly after being elected, he attended a workshop on the Sustainable Communities Act, which allows local communities to seek a change to a regulation where it can be demonstrated that it is harming local social cohesion.
Last week, councillors voted all-but-unanimously (with just one Liberal Democrat abstaining) in favour of his motion calling on Durham County Council to make a submission to the government under the Act, whereby tenants would be exempted from the under-occupancy charge if there is no suitable alternative accommodation in the local vicinity.
Cllr Clare told the Newton News: ‘Many people oppose the under-occupancy charge, even the United Nations, but the government has just ignored them.  It struck me that here was a way, not just to complain, but to use an existing law to alleviate the problem – as the Sustainable Communities Act is intended to do.
‘It is great news that the Labour Party has pledged to abolish the under-occupation penalty in 2015.  But meanwhile, if our proposal succeeds, it will give many ‘bedroom tax’ victims a breathing space until the charge can be abolished.
‘The government has no reasonable grounds to oppose our submission because – where tenants are trapped and unable to leave – it cannot be claimed that the charge is freeing up properties for families who need it.
In such a situation, the ‘bedroom tax’ becomes simply a malicious attack on tenants, with no other end than to drive them to debt and despair … and surely the government will not say that this was an intended outcome of the under-occupancy charge?’