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£8.3 million claimed in London wide Pension Credit take up campaign
We are pleased to launch the results of our Pension Credit take up campaign
run in partnership with the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London.
We worked with 17 London boroughs to proactively target Pension Credit to eligible households. As a result, £8.3 million has been claimed so far by over 2,000 households. With the campaign expanding to 23 boroughs this autumn, we are pleased to be able to target even more of the estimated £246 million of Pension Credit that goes unclaimed in London.
Councillor Claire Holland, Executive Member for Communities at London Councils, the local government association for Greater London, said: “This campaign is a great example of what can be achieved through collaboration and intelligent use of data.” Deven Ghelani, Director of Policy in Practice, said the results in London are “easily replicable across the
country.”
Join our webinar with the Greater London Authority to learn more.
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We're thrilled to announce that the London wide Pension Credit campaign has been shortlisted for a PFA Award 2023.
We're finalists in the Digital Finance Project of the Year category. We're looking forward to the finals on 28 November and hopefully inspiring other regions to run similar campaigns.
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Discussing the outcomes and replicability of our Pension Credit campaign with Cities Today
Deven Ghelani and Abigail Everett spoke with Sarah Wray at Cities Today about the impact of our Pension Credit campaign.
With £19 billion in benefits unclaimed across the UK, platforms such as LIFT are essential to enabling councils to identify residents eligible for support, helping them to claim and beginning to close the benefits gap.
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Deven Ghelani, Policy in Practice, said: “If the public sector were more effectively able to share data with one another, with appropriate governance, safeguards and public purpose in mind, we could do a much better job for our citizens whilst also saving taxpayers’ money.”
Read the article
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Do you know the value of unclaimed benefits in your area?
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We have broken down the £19 billion of unclaimed benefits nationwide by local authority area.
At least 6 million households are missing out on over 21 million claims. Book a chat with us to find out how much is unclaimed in your area.
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Welcome to EDF Energy
We are delighted to welcome EDF Energy to Policy in Practice and look forward to hearing from Sharon Gill, Customer Relations Manager at EDF, who joins our September webinar. Sharon will talk about the innovative approaches they are taking to help customers, some of whom may be struggling for the first time.
Join our webinar to learn:
- Brand new analysis of the latest energy price cap for October to December and how it will affect different households
- EDF’s approach to proactively targeting support to customers
- Tools to help advisors have supportive affordability conversations with customers
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Housing providers boost financial resilience and empower customers
Northern Ireland Housing Executive and Community Housing spoke on our July webinar about how they are helping customers through the cost of living crisis.
Both organisations are working hard to build the financial strength of households and we are proud to help. Here is what they have achieved since implementing the Better Off Calculator.
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Northern Ireland Housing
Executive
NIHE has moved to a proactive approach to supporting customers. Every potential tenant gets a benefit check. Existing tenants who don't have rent arrears but are struggling to pay bills after their rent are offered support.
This has resulted in:
- £3.5 million generated in benefits uptake since introducing the calculator in 2021
- £850,000 generated in additional rent income. This has reduced or wiped out rent arrears for many
households
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Community HousingCommunity Housing's new tenancy sustainability team set out to highlight the impact they could make with a proactive approach to
supporting financially vulnerable households through regular benefit checks. This has resulted in: - 2000 customers supported and provided with advice over the past year
- £4.1 million in increased annual income in the form of benefits and lump sums
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Welcome to new clients: East Sussex County Council, Plymouth City Council
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"East Sussex County Council and partners in the East Sussex Multi Agency Financial Inclusion Group saw value in the LIFT Platform and how it could maximise the uptake of eligible welfare benefits and provide insight into how our region's needs are changing. This will directly support our work to address ‘cost of living’ challenges and support greater financial inclusion and wellbeing. "District and Borough Councils will be undertaking targeted campaigns to improve
benefit uptake and help increase residents' income in order to limit the risk of: - Evictions and unsustainable tenancies
- Increased household debt
- Increased homelessness applications and repeat homelessness cases
- Increased poverty"
Paul Bolton, Service Development Manager, East Sussex County Council
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"This year we made the decision at Plymouth to review our current Council Tax Support scheme. We want to ensure that we are adequately supporting the households most impacted by the rising cost of living, particularly working families with young children and those with disabilities.
"We have benefited from the resources we have used from Policy in Practice in the past, and so when we decided to embark on this work we chose to partner with Policy in Practice. Their expertise in modelling and providing data-based advice made them the right fit for this project.
"We are looking forward to seeing the positive impact we can create through this scheme."
Paul Walshe, Service Manager, Plymouth City Council
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We're proud to be part of the 2025 Fintech Pledge
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Congratulations to Zopa and ClearScore for reaching the halfway mark on their 2025 Fintech Pledge.
Policy in Practice is proud to be an ally of the pledge which strives to encourage 10 million actions that will improve consumers' financial resilience by 2025.
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| New rules mean 200,000 extra UC claimants can get help for their mortgage interest
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Changes to Support for
Mortgage Interest (SMI) eligibility criteria mean more low income homeowners are now eligible. However, our research has found that 98% of eligible households aren't claiming. SMI loans are designed to help homeowners on certain benefits pay interest on their mortgages. With SMI rates at 2.65% and the average mortgage interest rate at 6%, we investigate how useful they are and what other support is available Read our blog post |
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Forward look to upcoming events
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We are gearing up for a busy events season and looking forward to seeing you in person. Here is what we'll be up to over the coming months.
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| September
6 CCW Vulnerability Seminar
6 -7 IRRV Scottish Conference, Glasgow
Come and see us on stand 1
11 -12 National Housing Summit, Birmingham
Come and see us on stand 37
13-14 Institute of Water Conference, Glasgow
Come and see us in the main hall
14 DigiGov North, Manchester
14 UK Credit and Collections Conference, Manchester
Come and see us on stand 2 with Webio
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| October
1- 4 Conservative Party Conference, Manchester
4 - 6 IRRV Annual Conference, Telford
Come and see us on stand 24 and hear us talk about Universal Credit data on day
2
8 -11 Labour Party Conference, Liverpool
17 -19 Solace Summit, Birmingham
Come and see
us on stand 27
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| November
9 MALG Conference, Birmingham
Come and see us in the main hall
28 ERSA Annual Conference, London
Come and see us in the main hall
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Congratulations to IRRV Awards 2023 finalists
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Ahead of the IRRV Performance Awards in October, we're highlighting the work done by Folkestone and Hythe District Council. We're shortlisted for an award alongside the FHDC team in the Excellence in Partnership working in Community Involvement and Debt Resolution category. Read about Folkestone and Hythe's approach to tackling financial vulnerability and how they used LIFT to boost vulnerable households' income by £1.1 million.
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Jobs at Policy in Practice
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Want to join us? If you share our passion for using data and technology to change lives, we'd love to hear from you. See our latest vacancies:
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If you would like to join our talent pool for future opportunities visit policyinpractice.co.uk/jobs. We enjoy regular socials like our recent sun drenched match of rounders in Green Park.
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