AS LOCAL JOBLESS FIGURES SOAR, GOVERNMENT MAKES LIFE YET MORE DIFFICULT FOR ST ALBANS RESIDENTS

12.01.00pm GMT Thu 12th Feb 2009

• Local Jobseeker Allowance claimant count doubles in one year

• Government forces St Albans Council to raise council rents by up to 10 percent

"The latest Jobseeker Allowance claimant count for St Albans is truly sobering," says Sandy Walkington, Liberal Democrat candidate. "The percentage of resident working age people claiming the benefit has literally doubled in a year - from 0.9% in January 2008 to 1.8% last month. The rate of increase is also speeding up. 0.3 percent of the local working age population started claiming in January alone. That is 477 new claimants. And the overall increase is sharper than the average across the region and the UK as a whole. The 'direction of travel' is very disturbing.

"Every single claimant is a personal tragedy. And the figure of course under-represents the true jobless situation since many newly unemployed people do not qualify for Jobseekers Allowance and others choose not to claim.

"It is against this background that government policy on council house rents looks so truly perverse. Through good management St Albans District Council has been able to freeze its council tax - a zero percent increase. What better way to help residents in this time of acute financial stress? It helps everyone, even if the impact is hugely lessened by the Conservative county council continuing to impose above-inflation increases from County Hall.

"But the council has to take orders from the Labour Government in London on the levels of council house rent it must set. Council house residents are generally less advantaged than other sections of the community. So I find it truly astonishing that the Government in Whitehall thinks that residents of one bed properties are so rich they can afford to pay a rent increase of 10.38 percent - over eleven times the current rate of inflation. The average across all council tenants is to be 6.8 percent. The Government will then confiscate virtually half of all this rental income - £10 million - to shore up its own finances. Money out of council tenants' pockets over and above all the other taxes they pay. What world do these ministers live on? Whitehall is barely twenty miles from St Albans - it might as well be on another planet," Sandy concluded.