MORE than a third of East Lancashire’s social housing tenants are currently in housing debt, new figures have revealed.

And campaigners are warning the situation could become worse as the full implications of the bedroom tax are felt.

In some parts of the area 60 per cent of tenants are unable to keep up with rent payments with at least a quarter in each association affected.

The numbers in arrears, which have gone up by more than 10 per cent in two years, comes months after the Government introduced cuts to housing benefit to anyone who had a ‘spare’ room.

Those on the front line dealing with struggling residents believe the problem will intensify with the introduction of universal credit, which will make tenants responsible for transferring housing benefit to their landlord, in October.

Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) advice session supervisor for Nelson, Mohammed Khan said: “I think personally that these cuts and changes to benefits and council tax coupled with a bad job market, lack of smaller social housing properties and difficulties in prioritising increasing household bills will only become more devastating by the end of the year.

“We had pinpointed this month as when we expected to start to see an increase in queries due to these numerous changes.

“In the coming months I believe we could see more people with increasing rent arrears, evictions, and people being forced into private housing which may be more expensive.

“In worst cases it could lead to vicious cyclical debt problems, homelessness, escalating mental health issues, relationship breakdowns and even unemployment.”

Together Housing Group Managing Director, the parent group for Twin Valley, Greenvale and Housing Pendle, Ian Clark, said: “We have, and will continue to, work with tenants who are expecting financial difficulty or are affected by the under-occupancy charge to see if we can help and would urge anyone who has concerns to contact us immediately.”

Figures show almost one third of tenants in Burnley’s main housing provider, Calico, are now struggling with debts totalling £364,000 between them, an increase of £138,000 since 2010.

In Rossendale, current figures suggest that over half the tenants are in rent arrears, while 40 per cent of tenants in Blackburn and 27 per cent of Pendle residents are behind with their payments. The number in Hyndburn was almost 40 per cent of 3,200 households and in Ribble Valley it was 378 out of 1,250 tenants.

Together Housing, the parent group that houses 16,000 tenants through Twin Valley, Greenvale and Housing Pendle, said the figures for their tenants would be subject to ‘significant’ reduction by the end of the financial year as some payment factors had not been taken into consideration.