Tag Archives: bedroom tax

Housing

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

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spare bedroom
Image by Sophie Drake

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.”

But difficulties with illness, finding suitable work and trying to manage family finances mean it is far from simple for many hard-pressed families.

Breaking the rules

21-year-old Sarah from Cornwall pays her stepfather’s monthly ‘spare room subsidy’ charge in return for living in the unoccupied room he has in his four bedroom house. Continue reading “I take illegal measures to support my family against benefit cuts” →

investigation

1 in 20 users of domestic abuse scheme affected by bedroom tax

Almost 1 in 20 households using the Sanctuary Scheme for people at risk of domestic violence have been affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy, reports Lorcan James.

Figures obtained from FOI requests to 79 Local Authorities show that from 2009, 281 households have been affected, meaning an average loss of £14 pounds per week. Continue reading 1 in 20 users of domestic abuse scheme affected by bedroom tax →

roundup

The week in welfare reform – roundup

 Magazine - week in welfare reform 070314

Once again we’ve rounded up some of the key updates from @HMIwelfare over the last week into a Flipboard magazine.

Stories include unfit royal housing benefit property, claims that food poverty is a bigger public health concern than diet, how the sale of small council homes condemned thousands to the bedroom tax, and an equality analysis of the planned closure of the Independent Living Fund.

Click here to read the magazine.

Tips and tutorials

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

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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…

1. Joseph Rowntree Fdn.  @jrf_uk,   @Helen_Barnard

Helen Barnard is Research Programme Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), the social research policy charity of Quaker origins.

The JRF conducts a range of research into welfare issues, and created the MIS, the Minimum Income Standard, estimating what is an adequate income based on what the public believe to be minimum living standards.

2. ResolutionFoundation @resfoundation

Living standards report Look out for the launch of their study The State of Living Standards 2014 on February 11th. Continue reading 25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – the first 10 →

Tips and tutorials

How to compile a news feed on welfare issues (or any other) – part 1: what’s going on?

Earlier this week we published our list of 19 places to follow welfare developments. In the first of a three-part series, we explain how to get your own list of useful feeds into one page, and share it with others.

Step 1: Use a ‘personalisable homepage’ news reader like Netvibes or Feedly

There are a number of services that allow you to follow multiple sources of news at the same time – often called ‘news readers’ or ‘RSS readers’. I used Netvibes for compile this list, because you can share those lists with other people, but you may have another preference (Feedly and Flipboard are also nice, but currently don’t have the same option). The video below is just one of many providing an introduction to Netvibes:

Follow the instructions above on creating an account with Netvibes and adding feeds.

If you want your feeds page to be seen by others

If you want your feeds to be public, however, you’ll need to enable the public dashboard first. To do this: Continue reading How to compile a news feed on welfare issues (or any other) – part 1: what’s going on? →