Housing

“I take illegal measures to support my family against benefit cuts”

In January 2014, Iain Duncan Smith, Government Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, set out plans for the future of welfare in the UK. In his policy speech ‘Simplifying the welfare system and making sure work pays’ he said: “Our welfare reforms are about ensuring it is no longer more worthwhile to be on benefits than in work.” […]

4 unmissable graphs of the UK’s housing bubble

From the construction and housing booms to price changes and renting versus buying, Tom Davies presents 4 charts to explain what’s happened to housing. 1    Bursting point? Another housing bubble  How unaffordable can it get?  House prices in the UK continue  to increase. Median earnings only increased by 57% from 1996 to 2012, but house prices […]

25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – numbers 11-25

We’ve compiled a list of 25 useful Twitter accounts if you want to follow welfare reform. Yesterday we revealed the first 10 – here are the other 15… Follow them all – and over 40 others – as a list here. 11.Samuel Miller @Hephaestus7 Disability specialist Samuel Miller is taking the government to court in The […]

25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – the first 10

We’ve compiled a list of 25 useful Twitter accounts if you want to follow welfare reform. In this post we reveal the first 10… Follow them all – and over 40 others – as a list here. How we did it: finding Twitter accounts to follow 1. Joseph Rowntree Fdn.  @jrf_uk,   @Helen_Barnard I shouldn’t have […]

19 places to get updates on welfare reform

If you want to keep track of what’s happening in welfare reform we’ve compiled this list of some of the most useful – and varied – sources on everything from the bedroom tax to child poverty. We’ve also put together a dashboard if you want to follow these on a single easy-to-check webpage. You can follow […]

How to find new leads in an old news report on empty property

Background material and general reporting on an area can often provide all sorts of clues and leads for further, deeper investigation. This piece from the Birmingham Mail is a particularly good example. On the surface it is a rather general report on an empty property in the city – but along the way it includes all sorts […]

Housing and #welfarereform – a Twitter discussion

[View the story “Housing and #welfarereform – a Twitter discussion” on Storify]

Welfare reform and data: telling London’s benefit cap stories

#WelfareReform child poverty mapped – but ‘doesn’t show the variation at ward level’ – Ade, @1in10 pic.twitter.com/uyVo4ja6cG— HMI Welfare (@HMIWelfare) December 9, 2013 Representatives of the voluntary sector gathered on Monday for an event to share good practice on using data on the impact of welfare reform – and Help Me Investigate was there to […]

Useful links to Sept 16th: reassess mental illness; axe bedroom tax; the new poor; CPAG update

These are some welfare links we found interesting during the second week of September. What were Ian Duncan Smith’s ‘welfare reforms’ really about?. Guardian, Sue Marsh, spokeswoman and author of Diary of a Benefit Scrounger says the reforms are frightening the most vulnerable. Hard evidence: are migrants draining the welfare system?. The Conversation. The evidence […]

Useful posts to Sept 6: welfare reforms mauled;whose upturn? dreading UC

These are some welfare links we found interesting during the first week of September. Britain 2013: children of poor families are still left behind.Guardian, Society, Poverty. Has Britain moved on since the Born to Fail? report of the early 70′s, … Continue reading