Tag Archives: housing benefit

investigation

Prisoner benefit overpayments plummet – but DWP still missing £21m

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Benefits paid to prisoners have declined by 96 per cent since 2007 – but almost £21m is still missing because only half the money has been recovered to the Department for Work and Pensions, an investigation by Help Me Investigate has revealed.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) centralised its benefits database in April 2012, prompting the decline in overpayments to prisoners: data provided in response to Freedom of Information requests shows that in 2007 the DWP paid prisoners £8.8m in benefits, but this figure dropped to £320,000 in 2013. Continue reading Prisoner benefit overpayments plummet – but DWP still missing £21m →

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.

data

Benefit sanctions data to be released for first time on DWP stats site

dwp stat_explore

The Department for Work and Pensions statistics site Stat-Xplore will publish data on sanctions  for the first time next month Continue reading Benefit sanctions data to be released for first time on DWP stats site →

data, links

Data: Welfare spending breakdown

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The Labour blog Left Foot Forward provides a useful breakdown of UK welfare spend that demonstrates where most of the money is going, and how that might be shaping government policy.

Despite the spin on unemployment and immigration, for example:

“Almost half our welfare expenditure, all £78.4 billion of it, is spent on our ageing population. And the number of people drawing a state pension is ever-growing”

Benefit and tax credit expenditure, 2009-2010

Next, “A breakdown of [the 22.08 per cent of welfare expenditure that goes to workers on low incomes] shows an enormous focus on housing, which explains the increased attention on housing benefit:”

Welfare expenditure for people on low incomes, 2009-2010

Simple, but useful. Sadly, there’s no link to the raw data. Interestingly, in looking for that I found this website on UK public spending – created by left wing blogger Christopher Cantrill. As both of these sources have a self-declared political orientation, it’s worth tracking the source of the data, declared here.

(By the way, regarding political bias: if a source has declared it, that doesn’t mean their information is not valid, only that you need to check the information. If a source has not declared a bias, you should always assume they have one, and still check the information.)

Can you add anything more?