Poverty – And Child Poverty In Particular – Is Rising

Poverty in the UK is increasing after two years of heavy welfare cuts have helped to push hundreds of thousands of people below the breadline, according to an independent study of the coalition government’s record. Although middle-earners saw incomes rise marginally after 2013, policies including the bedroom tax and below-inflation benefits rises have reduced incomes for the poorest, pitching an estimated 760,000 into poverty since the last official figures were produced, according to the New Policy Institute (NPI) thinktank.Child poverty showed the biggest increase, with 300,000 youngsters moving into hardship, reversing a fall in the headline figure recorded in the coalition’s first year. NPI estimates 29% of UK children are in poverty after housing costs. Download the report from the npi website.

Is Universal Credit Worth Saving?

The National Audit Office (NAO) report ‘Universal Credit: Early Progress’ was as damning as is possible for such a report to be. It criticised the governance, planning and oversight of the whole project, whose initial timetable has slipped alarmingly and final delivery date of next Autumn looks exceptionally optimistic.  Replacing six benefits with one is not as simple as it seems. Paying the housing element to the claimant is less simple than paying it to the landlord. And what UC simplifies, the bedroom tax and localisation of council tax support make complicated again.  At what point are gains outweighed by the losses? UC is currently in its pilot phase, and some of the data coming out of these pilots, particularly regarding the housing benefit aspects, is pretty worrying. UC was oversold as a silver bullet to tackle poverty/worklessness/ benefit dependency, call it what you want. But the benefit system has only ever been one part of the problem, and reducing efforts to tackle such issues to a piece of software was always going to fall short. Read more on the New Policy Institute website.

Website Tracking Council Tax Benefit Changes Launched

A think tank has launched a website tracking changes to council tax support in England.  Council Tax Support Update has been launched by the New Policy Institute, which produces evidence-based research on a range of social and economic issues including income, work, housing and poverty.  The data, which covers local authorities in England, provides information on each of the schemes agreed.  According to the site, 86 councils have decided (or are in the final stages of deciding) their CTS schemes for April 2013. They must have their local schemes in place by the end of January. View the website by clicking on the logo below.