Families To Face Bedroom Tax Three Months After Bereavement Under Universal Credit

Bereavement charities are warning about something today that I can hardly believe.

Under universal credit, grieving families will be hit by the bedroom tax if a room remains unoccupied for just three months after the death of a family member, the National Bereavement Alliance group of charities has said.

Yes, readers, you read that right. Three months. Twelve weeks. Ninety days. After a family bereavement. A death. Of a family member of the people paying bedroom tax.

This will be reduced from the current period of grace of 52 weeks.

Readers, this has made me so angry. Have the Government got hearts of stone? Have they never experienced bereavements within their households?

Of course, we all know they have. We all know the depth of pain they have felt in the immediate time after the very sad event of family bereavement.

We all know that the experience of  losing your own parent, your own sibling or your own child leaves anyone, anywhere in the world, in unimaginable pain.

The NBA say, quite rightly, that having to worry about ‘practicalities’ so soon after a bereavement would add to the ‘distress’ of grieving families.

So, readers, do the Government not realise this? Do they no longer remember that benefit claimants, people who pay bedroom tax, are, just as they are, human beings with human emotions?

I have my doubts about this policy being legal. I am fast running out of the energy required to fight a Government who keep revealing policies such as this one- policies that give the impression that they no longer consider benefit claimants human beings.

Yet I have known parents who have lost their own children as a result of severe disability. I have known people who have lost their siblings. I have known children who have lost their parents.

I have seen their pain- it is a pain that lasts a lot longer than three months.I shiver just thinking about what they would have felt like if they had been faced with the bedroom tax in the immediate months afterwards.

A year long period of grace goes some way towards being reasonable.

Please, readers, if you agree with me that benefit claimants need a year long period of grace after a family bereavement before having to consider paying the bedroom tax, please, I ask you to share this article and do everything you possibly can to fight against the extremely cruel policy of a reduced, three month period of grace.