Britain’s Benefits Tenants – Series 2 Wednesday 9pm

Yes, Neil, let’s see if Channel 4 producers can move away from the usual lazy landlord-bashing. My suspicion is that they won’t be able to and will go for showing things only from the tenants’ perspective, but I would love to be proved wrong. I also wonder if Shelter will get a word in as they can’t seem to open their mouths without slagging us off.

shelter should not have charitable status–it is robbs personal political campaigning vehicle and costd taxpayers £40+ millions a year

ps–it provides no residential accommodation

Reply to the comment left by “terry sullivan” at “10/08/2016 – 10:05“:

I agree, Terry. It is a very biased organisation and its name is a misnomer. It should be called something like ‘we hate landlords’ or ‘we like to talk but we don’t do anything useful.’ How an organisation which provides no shelter, and in fact spends a vast amount of time and money campaigning against those who do (us) can call itself ‘Shelter’ must be a breach of the Trades Description Act or whatever it’s called. That would be a good legal case!

Reply to the comment left by “Dr Rosalind Beck .” at “10/08/2016 – 10:17“:

I recollect an episode of “Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords” where Shelter helped to rehouse a single mother and her daughter, with the help of ….a private landlord (though I don’t recall any credit being paid to the landlord…).

This is turning into a very good series. It really shows the landlords’ point of view for a change and the shambles of Universal Credit in particular. I couldn’t believe it when in the second episode a landlord was charging £300 a month for a 5-bed house, housing a mother and three or four children, one of whom was disabled and the council said the rent was too high and that it should be £170! The tenant appealed and the allowance was increased, but crikey, what planet are the council on? I bet the council wouldn’t have charged £170 for a 5-bed house and yet they expect landlords to, when landlords also have to pay tax on any profit and pretty soon tax on turnover as well… So I am pleased so far with how this series is panning out.

Unfortunately I was dodging between the sitting room and kitchen trying to watch while cooking a meal, so did not see all of this programme, but the impression I had was that the rental figures you quote for the five-bedroom house were weekly rather than monthly.