Over the last few months I have been working on trying to get the County Council to agree to implementing a non-eviction policy for those residents who end up in arrears on the council housing rent through no reason other than the under-occupancy charge or as some call it the Bedroom tax.

I wrote a report and asked officers to look into it, correct it and make recommendations. I then asked the Labour Cabinet member for his support in this matter.

Whilst there was clear sympathy with my proposal I was unable to get support on this, and so will be challenging the cabinet member at the next full council meeting. We could have put forward a motion and called for a vote but as Labour always votes down what we put forward I am seeing if continued pressure will result in some consensus.

Hopefully from this there will be some Labour councillors who will break rank and start to realise there are some things we can do to stop people from being evicted through no fault of their own. More than 10 councils across the country have already brought in non-eviction policies and I really hope that Labour councillors will recognise that this is something we can do locally to help struggling families.

I will post the response in due course.