delete The Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Local Housing Allowance Amendments) Order 2015
This Order amends three principal Orders governing rent officer functions for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit. It modifies local housing allowance determination rules by: (1) freezing allowances at January 2015 levels or capping them at the 30th percentile of market rents, (2) omitting certain paragraphs that allowed higher percentile calculations, and (3) adjusting effective dates for Universal Credit determinations. The changes restrict how local housing allowances can be calculated, effectively imposing stricter caps on housing benefit payments.
This regulation perpetuates government price-fixing in the private rental market through local housing allowance caps. Such price controls distort market signals, reduce landlord incentives to rent to benefit claimants, decrease housing supply over time, and create perverse two-tier markets. The freeze at 2015 levels and 30th percentile caps are arbitrary constraints that harm the very tenants they purport to help by reducing available housing options. These interventions were inherited from EU frameworks and represent exactly the kind of bureaucratic interference that suppresses market dynamism. Deletion would restore market-clearing rents and encourage investment in rental housing, ultimately expanding supply and choice for tenants.