Increase the time period that a claimant can apply for housing benefit from 1 month to the the date in question.

Allow working housing benefit claimants to claim housing benefit towards mortgage payments.

As a single working parent working 25 hours a week around my son's school hours, I rely on housing benefit to get by. In the last 5 year's I have found many unfair flaws in the way the system works and I think it's in desperate need of change.

I have experienced the council demand months worth of wage slips and bank statements to then say that I owe them over £800 in overpayment yet when I have handed them wage slips from previous months for assessment when my wage was lower, they will only backdate the payments owed to me by 1 month. One lady I spoke to had them go back as far as 2 years to claim overpayment, but in monies owed to claimants, they can only be bothered to look back for 1 month prior to anything outstanding. This is very unjust and unfair!

You can currently claim for housing benefit to pay for a council property, housing association or private let home but you can't claim towards your own personal mortgage. So it's ok to pay for someone else's mortgage second hand through private letting, but the right to buy is denied to single parents and other housing benefit claimants for some unknown reason.

Why should single working parents and other working claimants be denied the opportunity to buy? Or in some cases, continue mortgage payments through change of circumstances which may risk them losing their home.

Although, our parliament members are allowed to purchase homes in London through the taxpayers money through the over indulgent expenses system they got going on there. This is a sanction upon people's rights denying them the opportunity to climb the property ladder but in the other hand giving them the opportunity to pay for someone else to be on the property ladder.

Hmm. Something not quite right there. So let's make it right by signing this petition to make a change.