GERRY BRAIDEN and STEWART PATERSON

Tens of thousands of tenants in the private rented sector were warned yesterday that they face major changes in housing benefit from next spring.

Senior local authority figures across Scotland claimed that a scheme designed to encourage fairness and choice will result in just the opposite - more deprivation and less impetus to escape the "benefits trap".

The council leadership in Glasgow, where the ramifications could be felt more than in any other UK local authority, is demanding a meeting with Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain.

The umbrella group for Scotland's councils, Cosla, has also raised concerns about the implications of the changes with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). It is also warning changes to the private rental market are "the thin edge of the wedge", with the DWP keen to extend some of the scheme into all of the socially rented sector.

Essentially, the DWP will next April do away with paying housing benefit tailored to the specific rent of a property, instead introducing an average for a particular area. Tenants will then either have to pay the extra amount themselves, or be allowed to keep the difference.

But with Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife and even the Highlands each being treated as a single area, the disparity in rents will be massive, with initial estimates putting the level people in some areas will need to make up at around £1500 a year.

Direct payments to landlords will also stop, with tenants instead receiving the rent in their hands.

Councils are now predicting that as tenants struggle to find accommodation in keeping with the average, there will be an exodus from places like the west end of Glasgow to the much cheaper east of the city, which already suffers multiple deprivation levels, or St Andrews in Fife to Glenrothes or Lochgelly.

The drive to find housing cheaper than the average so as to keep the remainder, up to £15 a week, is likely to undermine work incentives in areas such as Glasgow's east end. It is claimed that with a potential flood of tenants to cheaper accommodation, there will be a shortage of properties used by councils to rehouse homeless households.

George Ryan, political head of development and regeneration in Glasgow, said a city of the scale of Glasgow with a disparity in the cost of rents needed three areas.

He added: "This totally runs contrary to the other strands of our work with the DWP in addressing worklessness and the benefits trap. An influx of people on benefits to an area already with multiple levels of deprivation will exacerbate problems we have made inroads in tackling."

Cosla also called on Westminster to introduce separate average rents for areas with higher rental values, and said government rent officers should take on board the concerns of councils.

A spokesman said: "Tenants in high demand areas will no longer be able to live alongside family and friends or near their jobs. Cosla has urged that local rent officers have meaningful consultation with individual authorities and react favourably where evidence shows diverse rental levels in different localities."

Housing charity Shelter shares many of the concerns of local authorities, insisting housing benefit levels should be set at a rate that is reflective of the housing market conditions within particular areas.

Archie Stoddart, director of Shelter Scotland, said: "We would be concerned if housing benefit rates were to make decent accommodation unaffordable for people or result in hardship for private sector tenants and would share some of the concerns that are being expressed by the councils on this."

A DWP spokesman said: "Housing benefit never sought to guarantee that customers on benefit have unrestricted access to accommodation of any price. By setting Local Housing Allowance rates at the median level means that exactly half of the rental properties within any area will be affordable to people claiming housing benefit."