AN INCREASING number of social housing tenants in Worcester have been looking to downsize as a result of the controversial bedroom tax.

The government’s contentious Spare Room Subsidy - which has seen housing benefit payments cut by 14 per cent for social housing tenants with one empty bedroom and 25 per cent for those with two or more - has come under fire by critics who claim it victimises carers and the disabled since it came into force on April 1.

Last month, 2,294 people were registered on Worcester City Council’s housing register and Worcester Community Housing’s head of operations Iain Harkess said an increasing number of the organisation’s tenants living in larger properties had been looking to move into smaller homes to avoid paying the tax.

“There has been an increase in people looking to downsize as a way of dealing with a decrease in their benefits,” he said.

“We know there are a lot of families impacted by this but this can vary from family to family.

“It is early days but we are supporting any of our customers who want to move.”

Although figures published by the BBC yesterday showed large homes across the country were lying empty as tenants were unwilling to move into homes with more bedrooms than they needed, Mr Harkness said this trend had not been reflected in Worcester.

“We have three homes with three bedrooms or more empty and we’ve got people waiting to go into all of them,” he said.

“Likewise, we haven’t identified any significant increase in rent arrears but we recognise that it is early days since the introduction of the tax.”

A spokesman from Rooftop Housing – which also manages a number of homes in Worcester and the surrounding area – said many of their tenants were also looking to downsize but they were not experiencing any problems filling vacant homes.

“We have identified that 324 of our 6,000 households are currently affected by the bedroom tax,” he said.

“Of these, 169 are in rent arrears with 98 families being in arrears for the first time.”

Spokesmen from Festival and Sanctuary housing associations said they had not seen an increase in large homes becoming vacant.

Pensioners, armed forced personnel, foster carers and students who live at home for at least two weeks a year are exempt from the subsidy and the government has said it would free up larger homes for young families and save the taxpayer more than £500m this year alone.