ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

My understanding of Supporting People's underlying principle was that benefit recipients would be no worse off.

It now appears that at least one benefits office is taking the line that as the "rent" has been reduced (by the amount of the Supporting People payment), benefit payments must be reviewed and reduced – but not linked to just balancing out the Supporting People payment, it seems. Spot checks on tenants' benefit receipts reveal unexplained reductions over and above the Supporting People payment, so tenants are worse off.

We are fighting this vigorously on behalf of our tenants, who have an average age of 79.

The promised "monthly in advance" payments to registered social landlords have quickly become "monthly in arrears" and any similarity between the councils' invoices and our charges appears to be coincidental,

to our deficit. This is despite corrections forwarded, in some cases, as long ago as last September and still apparently ignored.

We have been directed through the contract documents to undertake Criminal Records Bureau-enhanced checks on all our sheltered housing (not care home) staff, including gardeners. These checks "may include" speeding offences! We were given a few weeks' notice of this.

This conflicts with both our own assessment of the requirement and the Criminal Records Bureau's advice earlier this month. This will all cost us time and money.

We had to appeal through our local MP before one local authority would even tell us which tenants were receiving benefits, despite us highlighting the potential problem two years ago and being given firm reassurances.

We had never accepted benefits direct and, thanks to our tenants, have never had a problem with arrears either. On 31 December, 2002, arrears were effectively zero. This year. we are already thousands behind on unpaid Supporting People payments.

I have refused to sign any Supporting People contract until we resolve this bureaucratic mess.

Am I alone in being appalled by this waste of both the government's and my tenants' money?