Children have been hit hardest by the welfare cap

Children find themselves sleeping on the floor in one-room accommodation, a Dickensian set of conditions that shames the nation

A residential tower block in Lambeth, south London (Getty)

In our final print edition we revealed how the legacy of Britain's housing crisis and the Government’s welfare cap was creating intolerable burdens of hardship for the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable families – children. In our new digital editions we will continue to speak out about something that shames modern Britain, and something that would need only the simplest of communications between local authorities to at least ameliorate. They are told to speak to each other by the housing Act, but there is little observance of the legislation, and still less in the way of sanctions applied to local authority officers who fail in their duty.

Case after case investigated by The Independent reveals the damage that is done when sick or damaged children are shunted half way across the country. Their health care is disrupted, their social care neglected, their home lives – if they can be so termed – wrecked. It may be that in some cases it has led to premature death and to injury. Most poignantly it threatens the well-being of unborn children. The ‘Notify’ system, supposedly there to provide information about families moving across local authority boundaries, is plainly not working.

The impact is clear: So far from taking children out of overcrowded and unfit accommodation, usually in the poorer districts of London, to more spacious and healthy living in the rest of the country, these children all too often find themselves sleeping on the floor in one-room accommodation, a scarcely believable Dickensian set of conditions that shames the nation. All too often, and unforgivably, it is simply due to one local council not telling another when a family is due to move; still less do they bother to pass on notes about health, social care and particular family circumstances. It is an uncaring approach to people who must already feel like human detritus being transported against their will from at least familiar surroundings to strange and sometimes hostile environments. All too often councils fail to provide suitable accommodation. For that they can be blamed to the extent that no government in recent times has supported the social housing that would be required to allow them to do that. As ever, it comes down the choices a society makes about the allocation of its resources. Not for a long time has affordable, clean, adequate housing for all been a priority for the British nation, despite the ever acute housing shortage.

In any case, this is no way to run a benefits cap. It may be the case that the nation no longer has the ability or the willingness to pay such substantial sums in housing benefit to families that happen to live in London and other expensive cities, but, if that is the case, then at least the policy could be applied humanely. A return to a policy of providing every family in the country with a roof over the heads would be a hugely expensive one, but to get things right for families moving – an often traumatic experience – would cost trivial amounts. It is not much to ask.