The Government have announced they will continue to pay the housing element of universal credit directly to tenants.

There had been calls for the money to paid directly to landlords in order to decrease the amount of social housing tenants in rent arrears. This had been affecting the chances of social landlords being able to borrow money.

However, welfare reform minister Lord Freud confirmed that no changes would be happening to universal credit payments in a speech to the Chartered Institute of Housing yesterday.

According to The Guardian, he said: "Our starting position is that people should manage their own budgets, including paying rent or mortgage, in the same way as other households do in work."

In a speech that will be of interest to everyone in public sector housing jobs, Lord Freud claimed to recognise the plight that social landlords were facing.

In response to this, he promised the universal credit payment system would be developed with social landlords in mind.  

He said that the Government would develop the system "in a way that protects the financial position of social sector landlords and keeps a facility to pay landlords directly."

A source from insidehousing.co.uk predicted that this may involve the introduction of exemptions that allow benefits to be defaulted to tenant bank accounts, but be able to go directly to landlords in certain circumstances.