No hiding place
Posted: December 13, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Welfare reform Leave a commentA combination of the recession, welfare reform and localism is set to generate increases in almost all forms of homelessness in England, according to comprehensive new analysis.
Homelessness Monitor: England 2012 published yesterday by Crisis is the full version of an academic study from which headline findings were released last week (equivalents will also be published for Wales and Scotland). It draws together evidence not only on what we normally think of as homelessness – rough sleeping and homeless acceptances – but also more hidden forms too such as concealed households, sharing and overcrowding.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
10 things you may not know about the Beveridge report
Posted: November 27, 2012 Filed under: History, Welfare reform 8 CommentsThis Saturday sees the 70th anniversary of the publication of the iconic report credited with the creation of the welfare state.
Sir William Beveridge published his report within weeks of the victory at El Alamein that seemed to mark a turning point in the Second World War. His ideas, and the language in which he expressed them, seemed to many people to symbolise what they were fighting for: a better world after the war and no return to the miseries of the 1930s.
Facing both ways
Posted: November 22, 2012 Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Tags: housing benefit, under-25s Leave a commentDecidedly mixed signals are emerging from different parts of the government over cutting housing benefit for the under-25s.
David Cameron seems determined to press ahead with the idea he first raised in April and then again at the Conservative conference in October. At prime minister’s questions yesterday he told Labour MP Mary Glindon: ‘I know that housing benefit is a very important issue, but there is a problem, which needs proper attention: we seem to give some young people a choice today, in that if they are on jobseeker’s allowance they can have access to housing benefit, but if they are living at home and trying to work they cannot. We need to recognise that in many cases we are sending a negative signal to young people through our welfare system.’
If that sounds like full steam ahead, Mary Glindon was getting some very different signals barely an hour earlier during a Westminster Hall debate she secured on the issue. Lib Dem communities minister Don Foster told her: ‘The hon. Member for North Tyneside said that the idea is something that the Government might effect, but the fact that something was said at a Conservative party conference does not mean that it becomes coalition policy. At the moment, it certainly is not.’
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
End of her tether
Posted: November 18, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Welfare reform Leave a commentSarah Teather’s outburst over the benefit cap is one of the most remarkable attacks on a government by a former minister in years.
Yes, the coalition makes this an unusual situation and this is a Lib Dem attacking a policy that was originally announced at the Conservative conference. Yes, this is an MP with a marginal seat with 2,000 families who stand to lose at least £50 a week and she needs anti-Tory votes to keep it. Yes, she had already signalled her attitude to the cap when she infuriated the Conservatives by missing a key vote in parliament.
However, there are three other things that make this something more significant than just revenge by someone who was sacked.
Regime change
Posted: November 9, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Welfare reform Leave a commentAnyone applying to their local authority as homeless faces a new regime from today and there are real doubts about how it will work on the ground.
The new power for local authorities to discharge their duty to homeless people into the private rented sector represents a fundamental break with the system established in the Housng (Homeless Persons) Act in 1977.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
April is the cruellest month
Posted: November 5, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Tags: council tax benefit, welfare changes Leave a commentEvery time you think you have got your head around the impact of the April 2013 welfare changes you realise you have forgotten something that makes it even worse.
I don’t need reminding that there are now just 147 days until the bedroom tax and overall benefit cap take affect. I know that increases in the local housing allowance will be restricted to CPI inflation from the same date. I realise that a range of other cuts in benefits and the localisation of council tax benefit and the social fund with reduced funding come in at the same time.
Red flags
Posted: October 30, 2012 Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty, Welfare reform Leave a commentAs the slow motion train crash of welfare reform continues, the driver is ignoring a succession of people desperately waving as he passes them.
Heedless of the big red flags they are holding, Iain Duncan Smith and his conductor Lord Freud sometimes even wave back and blow the whistle of their sleekly designed train in acknowledgement of what they see as the congratulations of the crowd.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Joining the dots on unemployment and welfare reform
Posted: October 21, 2012 Filed under: Labour market, Welfare reform | Tags: economy Leave a commentThere’s a contradiction lurking behind the good news about falling unemployment: we seem to be succeeding in getting people back into work who don’t want to be and failing with people who do.
The headline numbers in the labour market statistics are that unemployment fell by 50,000 in the three months to August to 2.5 million and the number of people in employment rose by 212,000 to 29.6 million. The latter figure is up by 462,000 since the 2010 election and is the highest total since records began in 1971.
Part of the reason why the number of people in work rose faster than unemployment fell is that the proportion of people between 16 and 64 defined as economically inactive is also falling. The total is down by 243,000 since the election to just over nine million and more than half of that fall (138,000) happened in the last three months.
Sound of silence
Posted: October 9, 2012 Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Tags: welfare cuts Leave a commentAmid all the rhetoric about those £10 billion cuts in welfare, what’s not being said could ultimately turn out to be more significant.
We’ve become so accustomed to welfare cuts that it’s easy to assume that another £10 billion is just more of the same. It isn’t and it is not at all clear where the savings will come from.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 