The charity is not exactly acting as part of the voluntary sector if it relies on hand-outs from local government, is it?

And the reason it is a Tory controlled council is that the Labour Party has been WIPED OUT of councils throughout England as a result of chronic incompetence and mismanagement. The voters had enough and removed them from power. Just as they will do to the government at Westminster. The latest poll predicts 121 seats for Labour and a Conservative majority of 336. Weep, lefties.

The full story quotes the charity raising rents by 90% sounds more like the Scrine Foundation where trying to commit institutional housing benefit fraud than anything else.

Good stuff, chaps.

1 – David Cameron called. Says he’d rather you saved the gloating and stuff about how charities aren’t really part of the voluntary sector if they get government grants until after the election, pls tks.

2 – the Scrine Foundation were trying to help vulnerable people rather than just leaving them to languish on benefits. Government bureaucrats took exception to this and the Tories locally (and you) agree with…

How exactly are the Scrine Foundation helping vulnerable people by pushing rents up by 90%. Honest question.

As I understand it, the foundation charges higher rents to cover the costs of providing extra services and support to the people living there. The tenants don’t pay any of it, because it is all covered by housing benefit.

This means that the people housed by Scrine Foundation are able to get more help and support than is offered by landlords (whether private, council or social) who are paid at the standard housing benefit rate. So the tenants get, say, £300/week’s worth of help and support rather than £65.77/week’s worth of help and support. Which is obviously better for them, but more expensive for the council.

Getting enough funding from the public sector to cover the full costs of providing services to vulnerable people is one of the main aims and biggest frustrations facing many charities, and it is something that the Tories have highlighted that they would want to do something to help, in words if, apparently, not in action.

donpaskini, please don’t take this the wrong way, as it sounds like they are trying to do these people some good.
But – they were playing the housing benefit system to fund their charity, you yourself say that they can only charge these over market rents because the tenants are on housing benefit. Whatever you or I might think of the rules that require councils to stick to a local market rate they pre-date both this government and that council (I personally fell foul of them over a decade ago). They were designed to stop either tenants or landlords making any money from housing benefit over and above that required for housing. Which is what the Scrine Foundation were doing.

>more expensive for the council.
No matter how noble the cause, they were forcing tax payers (not just in Canterbury) to pay for their good works, which in my mind isn’t ‘Charity’ – ‘the council’ has no money that isn’t the public’s.

>in words if, apparently, not in action.
Any last vestige of discretion this council had in the matter has been taken away by central government in recent years so while vulnerable people not getting help is an issue, it really isn’t due to any intrinsic evil of the tory group on Canterbury council. this kind of attack politics doesn’t make the world a better place.

No matter how noble the cause, they were forcing tax payers (not just in Canterbury) to pay for their good works, which in my mind isn’t ‘Charity’ – ‘the council’ has no money that isn’t the public’s.

I think you misunderstand the Tory position. Their issue isn’t that (theoretically) tax payers are paying for good works… their point is that the govt is inefficient and shouldn’t be providing these services – charities and the third sector should be.

Hence, its perfectly legit for this charity to fund its work through taxpayer money – thats the whole point of the third sector.

Except, after the Tories saying they wouldn’t want to cut funding services, only to ensure that more efficient and accountable third sector bodies provide it – they try and restrict that funding anyway.

£300 is a huge amount of money to pay a week for accomodation, so I’m not sure I can exactly see a huge justification for their defence here, certainly if one of those defences is to supposedly help those languishing on benefits by making them a higher benefit burden. Unfortunately there are no annual reports on their website for this charity so I can’t really see how their operations are funded, but I’m just getting a feeling this is a bit of 6 of one and half a dozen of the other really.

“think you misunderstand the Tory position. Their issue isn’t that (theoretically) tax payers are paying for good works… their point is that the govt is inefficient and shouldn’t be providing these services – charities and the third sector should be.

Hence, its perfectly legit for this charity to fund its work through taxpayer money – thats the whole point of the third sector.”

Sunny, I think this is a reasonable representation, but doesn’t go far enough: the logical continuation of this is that a charity can receive taxpayers’ money to fund its activities, but that it does not have an expectation of being able to take what it wants from the taxpayer. If a supplier of any service puts up prices by 90%, it can expect to lose custom. In this case, clearly the Council thought the benefits offered by the charity could not be sustatined, perhaps because the price had gone over the rates they were allowed to pay, perhaps because they felt it was inappropriate, perhaps because they could find alternative provision at a cheaper rate. The third sector involvement should not be as a substitue agency, directly funded by government, but as already viable providers, who accept contracts to provide a service. There can be no expectation of this being maintained regardless of standards of delivery or cost (unlike a lot of council provision), as in this case.

Hence, its perfectly legit for this charity to fund its work through taxpayer money – thats the whole point of the third sector.”

The ends justify the means?

If I understand correctly, housing benefit is for paying rent, not for services in addition to provision of accommodation.

There isn’t much to go on from the Kentish Gazette or the BBC article.

Scrine’s accounts for 2007 are overdue.

But the charity claims its main income stream is housing benefit (indeed they will lose £900,000 under the council’s proposals). Does this not seem prima facie wrong without even considering how much this income is?

Then we learn that the average rent is £177 a week, the maximum is £310 a week. Both seem rather excessive for rent in such accommodation in that area. Ah, Don says, but Scrine provides additional services. Well, OK, but that isn’t what housing benefit is for, is it?

I think Scrine were playing the system for the benefit of their clients. Regardless, no wonder the council investigated – surely any council would (although the notice of benefit reduction seems a bit short).

It seems to me that the issue we should be focussing on is why these people are in need of £177 a week services and accommodation and why they aren’t being helped out without others having to play the housing benefit system. But no, let’s have a go at the nasty Tories instead.

And if it is to be expected, Allan, then surely it needs to come from appropriate areas of spending. Using housing benefits to provide services and support is not what it’s there for and will ultimately only lead to those like the Tax Payers alliance using the heavily skewed figures for their own arguments. Now while I think the Tories are probably right in doing what they’ve done with regards to housing benefits, but is the order right? If the government believes the cause is a good one then it should have already arranged a way to make up the shortfall. If it can’t see a use then the charity has failed to make an adequate case for it’s survival.

It all feels like a charity resting on it’s laurels, and an administration being rather rash and unforgiving in an otherwise reasonable action.