Private Landlords Pocket £9.3bn In Housing Benefit

Record levels of taxpayers' money are being paid to private landlords, new figures show, with the bill for accommodating social tenants in the private rental sector having doubled in a decade. Sky News visited an area of west London where private companies are converting small family homes into houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) consisting of cramped bedsits for vulnerable people. A tenant, who lives in one of six bedsits in a property which used to be a two bedroom house, said housing benefit