GMB North West & Irish Region
15 April 2013

More and more councils are coming out to say that they oppose the bedroom tax. 

Leeds was one of the first cities to see protests against the tax. Its council has said it will reclassify 826 homes as one bedroom so that tenants don’t lose benefit. But around 14,000 people in Leeds will still be hit. And evicting them all would cost around £76 million.
 
Edinburgh council, run by a Labour and Scottish National Party coalition, says it won’t evict tenants who have nowhere to go. 
 
And in Northern Ireland two major housing association bodies are calling for the Stormont assembly to delay the tax until more houses are built. The Ulster Unionist opposition is supporting them.
 
And where housing associations and councils are pushing ahead with the tax, they face protests from their own residents. Residents of Salford’s Hillock estate targeted the office of landlords Contour Homes on Saturday of last week. “The main thing we all got from the protest was a sense of collective strength,” Adam Rose told Socialist Worker.
 
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