Better council tax collection, Scotland's welfare policy, £20 UC uplift and more

Poverty APPG uses our evidence on keeping the £10 uplift to Universal Credit

We recently gave evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Poverty about the impact of the removal of the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit.

Our analysis found that:

If the £20 uplift to Universal Credit is removed in April over half a million households will not be able to meet their essential costs. These households include over three quarters of a million children
Of these households, a quarter of a million families with a quarter of a million children are able to make ends meet but would be unable to if the £20 uplift was removed
Those already hit by other policies such as the two-child limit are most at risk. An extra 11% of families affected by the two-child limit will be unable to meet all of their essential costs if the uplift is dropped
If the Minimum Income Floor is reinstated alongside the £20 uplift being removed, the situation for self-employed households will be especially dire. Almost half of all self employed people on Universal Credit will then be unable to meet their essential costs

Our three reasons why the £20 uplift to Universal Credit should stay are:

1 in 8 households in receipt of UC will be unable to meet essential costs
Families are already losing vital support due to other welfare measures
The £20 uplift boosts the UK's economic recovery

Read our evidence on the impact on poverty of maintaining the £20 uplift in Universal Credit here
Read our blog The £20 uplift to Universal Credit is a first step out of poverty here
Listen to Deven Ghelani discuss the House of Commons debate on LBC here

A flexible approach to council tax collection in London

How council tax is collected can have an impact on the lives of low-income households. The handling of council tax arrears and the extra costs that can be incurred in the collection process can cause extreme poverty or destitution, and may increase levels of problem debt.

Policy in Practice has reviewed different collection processes across London for the Greater London Authority and evaluated their impact on citizens and councils.

Our analysis found:

No clear relationship between stricter council tax collection policies and higher council tax collection rates
Higher council tax collection rates are associated with the generosity of a borough’s Council Tax Reduction Scheme, and lower collection rates are associated with the level of poverty in the borough
Seeking to recover the full council tax bill, rather than a missed instalment, significantly weakens financial resilience, more so if charges for enforcement action are added

Paul Howarth presented our research and recommendations at a recent webinar where we were joined by Dan Drillsma-Milgrom, Sara Khan and Nick MacAndrews from Greater London Authority.

Listen back to Paul Howarth present the research
Listen back to our webinar Why we all need flexible council tax collection policies
Read our report Council Tax debt collection and low-income Londoners
Read our blog post A new approach to the collection of council tax in London

Welfare policy in Scotland

Policy in Practice welcomed the opportunity to provide evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee about welfare policy in Scotland. The inquiry examined the effect of welfare policies on the lives of claimants, and poverty and inequality levels more broadly in Scotland.

We found that Scottish welfare policy has protected low-income households from some of the impacts of UK welfare reform. However, there are remaining influences of austerity on claimants within Scotland, such as the 2-child limit. Further work is needed to improve the lives of Scottish low-income families, which will require coordination between Social Security Scotland and DWP during the transition of welfare responsibilities.

Read our analysis about welfare policy in Scotland here

Our Benefit and Budgeting Calculator and LIFT steering groups went online in January

In January we held our first customer steering groups completely online. We kicked off with the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator Steering Group first, closely followed by the LIFT Platform Steering Group. We were delighted to invite over 60 new clients who have purchased Policy in Practice products in the last year to join the steering groups and help shape the future direction of our product roadmaps.

At the Benefit and Budgeting Calculator steering group we welcomed a record number of 41 attendees to share and learn from each other’s experiences with the calculator during the pandemic. A special thank you to Rhiannon Dafydd from Grwp Cynefin and to David Lawrence from Kincardine and Mearns Citizens Advice for sharing how they have responded to the challenges presented by COVID-19 in the past year.

Read what happened at our latest Benefit and Budgeting Calculator steering group here

Our LIFT Platform steering group was also hugely successful, with a number of leading local authority clients sharing their successes from the past year and looking ahead to how data insights will help them in 2021. Thank you to Nick Harvey from Folkestone and Hythe Council for sharing how he and his team successfully managed the transition from six-monthly manual data refreshes to six weekly automated data refreshes. We are excited to be working with many other LIFT clients to create more timely insights from their data.

Read what happened at our latest LIFT Platform Steering Group here

Huge thanks to our clients who joined our steering groups. Hearing your experiences and opinions about our products is important to how we grow, and we value the direction you give to what we should do next.

Be part of our plans for My Benefit Calculator app

Last month we shared our exciting news of being chosen as a semi-finalist in Nesta’s £3 million Rapid Recovery Challenge. The fund is designed to support tools and services that improve access to jobs and money for people across the UK, focussing on those hardest hit by the economic shock from COVID-19.

Policy in Practice will be working hard to scale our winning solution, the My Benefits Calculator app, to thousands of people in the next year, in order to help those in society who need it most.

We are carrying out user research to help us develop My Benefits Calculator. If you work directly with people who have flexible incomes, low incomes or unstable employment and want to help shape our solution we want to hear from you. Please contact us soon on 0330 088 9242 or via hello@policyinpractice.co.uk.

Read about our plans for My Benefits Calculator app

We donate to our customers favourite charities

Many thanks to all our clients who contributed to our 12 Days of Christmas campaign with good news stories from 2020. It was a pleasure to showcase the excellent work our clients did in 2020 and we look forward to hearing more success stories in 2021.

Huge congratulations to our four prize winners who each received £50 to donate to a charity of their choice. We were proud to donate the charities below, on your behalf:

Grwp Cynefin donated to the Welsh Air Ambulance Charity
Wirral Citizens Advice donated to Wirral Change
Rotherham Council donated to Shilo Rotherham
Cornwall Council donated to St Petrocs

Read the inspiring stories from 2020 here

Next webinar: How to use data to increase people’s income
Wednesday 24 February at 10:30 to 11:45. Register here

Over £10 billion of benefits is unclaimed each year. If there was ever a time to ensure that our most vulnerable households are getting all the support they’re eligible for it is now.

Most councils hold this remit within their core corporate strategy and need a way to support these households as efficiently and effectively as possible using the limited resource and finances they have.

Leading local authorities are analysing their administrative data to identify financial vulnerability amongst their low-income residents, and then using the insights to create proactive targeted benefit uptake campaigns.

Join this webinar to hear:

How local authorities are analysing their data to increase people’s incomes
The challenges and opportunities of using data analytics to boost benefits take up
How county and district councils are working together to make a difference to residents’ lives using data insights

ICYMI: our January blog posts

What the closure of the SDP Gateway means for disabled people moving to Universal Credit
We explore the implications of the closure of the SDP Gateway and identify three groups who will miss out despite transitional protection.
Read blog post

Why we all need flexible collection policies for council tax debt
Policy in Practice reviewed different collection policies for council tax across London for the Greater London Authority. Hear our findings.
Read blog post

A new approach to the collection of council tax in London
Paul Howarth looks at new research about the collection of council tax in London commissioned by the Greater London Authority and published by Policy in Practice today.
Read blog post

The £20 uplift to Universal Credit is a first step on the path out of poverty
Read our 3 reasons why the £20 uplift to Universal Credit should be retained, and the related analysis we presented to the APPG on Poverty.
Read blog post

How councils can ease the administrative burden of the Covid Winter Grant Scheme
Administering the Covid Winter Grant Scheme has put councils under pressure. LIFT’s new poverty indicators can help identify eligible families.
Read blog post