A Douglas North MHK wants the Department of Infrastructure to review its five-year tenancy policy for social housing tenants.

David Ashford says the legislation, which was put in place in 2019, is having ‘adverse effects’.

He wants the DoI to review the eviction process, look into policies for those on benefits as well as adult children with income.

Mr Ashford said people weren’t against the system but they just wanted it to be ‘fair’.

He said: ‘The DoI has been looking at this social housing five-year tenancies, looking at the thresholds and changing the thresholds up, which is very much welcome.

‘The thresholds haven’t increased since they came in in 2019, which is now four years ago.

‘But the problem with five-year tenancies isn’t just around thresholds.

‘There’s all sorts of other issues, such as the way household incomes taken into account, to certain benefits such as carers allowance are treated, the way pension lump sums are treated and the fact that you’ve got no account of people’s ages.

‘For instance, I’ve got constituents who are coming up to retirement age where their income is going to go off a cliff. Yet, because it’s based on their current income and not where their income will be in potentially 12 to 18 months time, they’re going to be evicted and they’re going to have to start all over again from where they were 20 years ago.

‘What my motion does is it puts a time scale on DoI, reporting back and actually coming back to Tynwald to say what they’re going to do about the wider issues.

‘This isn’t just about income and threshold. There’s more fundamental problems in the system than that.’

Mr Ashford felt it would be ‘realistic’ to believe this could be settled by October this year.

He added: ‘I know [the DoI] have been looking at the issues and I know issues I’ve raised in the past, they have been taken on board.

‘I would hope that that gives them more than enough time, considering they are aware of many of the issues that I’m raising and it is something that needs to be settled now because this is happening to people on the ground now.

‘We’re encouraging behaviours that don’t fit with the rest of government policy either. For instance, I’ve got constituents who know they’re coming up for their entry view and because they’re worried that with two incomes coming into the house, it’s going to push them out or push their rent up quite substantially.

‘One or the other of them is either leaving work or retiring.

‘And this is at the same time other areas of government are saying we need to keep people experienced in the economy and actually try and get more people working.’

Asked if it’s a concern that the legislation that’s already in place isn’t good enough, the MHK said: ‘I think that it’s some adverse effects that perhaps couldn’t have been foreseen in 2019, but we know about them now and we need to deal with them in.’