Bradford is in a “different universe” to London when it comes to the effects of benefit cuts and changes.

That was the message put across by the Bishop of Bradford, the Right Reverend Nick Baines, when he spoke at a Faith Community Leaders and Workers event yesterday.

The event, at the Thornbury Centre, featured four guest speakers who told an audience of faith leaders and people who work on their behalf what the repercussions of benefit changes will be. In his opening speech, the Bishop said: “We are living in a different universe compared to London.

“We want to make the most out of learning what is really going on, getting some detail and beginning to work out how we respond. This is the beginning and not the end of the process.”

Nick Hodgkinson, of Bradford Advice Network, said benefit changes were “particularly tough for old industrial northern areas like Bradford”.

He asked how people on low incomes could possibly stretch their money any further and expressed concern that 27,000 ‘new payers’ of council tax might not realise they have to pay.

He said: “Some people have not quite got what is going to happen. It is about understanding the implications of the choices people make, not telling people what the right choices are.”

Lisa Cumming, a community associate at Bradford University, discussed the impact of reforms on community relations. She told of her fears that desperate people would turn to far right groups.

“If you roll back support and ask people to stand on their own two feet, what will come in to provide that support? I would say forces that I would not necessarily describe as good,” she said.

Dave Dickens, director of social housing provider Incommunities, said the ‘bedroom tax’, where benefits have been reduced for occupants of homes with more bedrooms than they need, would see people become homeless, neighbours become embroiled in conflict and children unable to visit parents and grandparents.

Emma Stone, of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, was the final speaker. She added: “The potential for social divisions is very real and we have to guard against it.”