The cost of a new law to further criminalise squatting could run to almost 20 times official estimates, wiping out government legal aid budget savings, according to the findings of a newly published report.
The study, commissioned by Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes (Squash) and supported by academics and politicians including a former Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, finds that the Ministry of Justice’s new law fails to account for extra spending on housing benefit squatters will claim once they are evicted.
The Can We Afford to Criminalise Squatting? report, published on Friday, finds the total costs of the law – clause 136 in the Legal Aid and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Lapso) – could run to between £316.2m and £790.4m over five years, depending on the number of squatters in England and Wales. This compares with the £350m in savings the MoJ hopes to make by cutting the legal aid budget.
Squatting in someone’s home is already a criminal offence but the MoJ hopes to extend the law to cover vacant residential buildings that have no tenant.
Squash says squatters in residential buildings are saving the government some £36m to 90m a year in housing benefit as they cannot claim while occupying a property, but that the MoJ has failed to factor these extra claims into their cost forecasts for the new law, which it estimates will be between £1m and 9m a year.
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