Information Bulletin

Summary of News and Publications from the Week ending 10 January 2014

JRF Activity
Increasing the Minimum Wage is only a Half Answer to Poverty Blog from Helen Barnard. New Years Resolutions for 2014 Based on JRF Research Blog from Charlotte Morris.

Poverty
The value of the earnings Universal Credit claimants will be able to keep will fall significantly in real terms by 2017, according to analysis by the Resolution Foundation. It estimates that a single parent family could be up to 420 a year worse off and a couple with children could see a fall of up to 230 a year. The Department for Work and Pensions found the unemployment rate for white people aged 16-24 was 19% last September, rising to 46% for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers and 45% for young black people. For workers of all ages, the lowest unemployment rate in 2012 was for the White ethnic group at 7%, and the highest, at 17%, was found in the Pakistani/Bangladeshi group. The DWP is said to be planning to remove Government funding from local authority welfare assistance schemes in 15 months' time. At the moment the Government provides 180m a year for a hardship fund providing emergency help for low-income families who suffer sudden financial crises as a result of domestic violence, ill-health or natural disaster. George Osbornes speech on Monday warned that 25bn in spending cuts, due to be imposed between 2016-17 and 2017-18, would have to include 12bn in welfare cuts, which could include the previously mentioned proposal to cut housing benefit for under 25s. Local authorities will receive 755m to deliver 15 hours of free childcare for disadvantaged two-year-olds from September 2014, expanding the scheme to up to 285,000 two-year-olds. Childcare organisations, however, have warned that the funding wont be sufficient to cover the actual costs of delivering the scheme. Children in the first three years of Primary School in Scotland, will have the option of free school meals from January 2015. Pay Day lenders should pay a levy to help fund debt advice services, recommends the Low Commission, an independent enquiry into cuts in legal aid for social welfare cases. Community and voluntary groups, and social enterprises in Wales will be able to bid for capital grants of up to 500,000 to tackle poverty in their area, from a new 10 million capital fund which was launched this week. Projects will need to demonstrate how their work will prevent and help to alleviate the effects of poverty.

Place
Some progress is said to have been made to end the four year deadlock on flood prevention plans for new housing developments. A deal is thought to have been reached where Councils will be able to charge owners of new homes for maintenance of new anti-flood infrastructure, in the same way as existing homes pay to have their run-off water treated by water firms. Discussions over technical standards and methods are still in deadlock. Cuts to Defras budget could affect the departments ability to respond to emergencies such as flooding, warns a new report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The report calls on Ministers to clarify how further budget cuts will impact on the ability of the department to respond to emergencies. Almost one in ten families now live in overcrowded homes as defined by the official government measure, a rise of 40% since 2008, according to research from insurers LV. The floor space in an average home occupied by a family has fallen by 10 square metres in the last ten years and 20% more families with children now live in flats than five years ago. There are now also 14% more multigenerational houses than five years ago, as adult children more commonly return to the family home. More public money than ever before is being spent housing people in privately rented homes that are in poor condition, according to a report due to be published later this month by think tank IPPR North. The number of people living in privately rented accommodation and receiving housing benefit has risen by 900,000 in the last 10 years and over one third of privately rented homes also fail to meet the Decent Homes standard. The report will recommend that local authorities make better use of their powers to regulate the private rented sector. Back to Rising Damp? Addressing housing quality in the Private Rented Sector is due out later in January. Information has emerged from the DWP which means some tenants could be exempt from the bedroom tax. A clause in housing benefit legislation passed by the previous government means that tenants who have been continuously claiming housing benefit since January 1996 or before, while living in the same property, are immune from the charge. The Chartered Institute of Housing has begun publishing a series of policy essays on housing. The first Where are we coming from? examines what housing policies have changed since 2010 and what has and hasnt worked. The second Looking to the Future looks at the key issues facing housing over the next five years. The third is Social, labour market and demographic changes - what challenges do they pose for housing?. Figures from Westminster council estimate that at the current rate, it will take five years to rehouse all of its 393 tenants affected by the bedroom tax. Plaid Cymrus Sustainable Communities Commission has launched a call for evidence looking for ideas from communities on how sustainable communities can be made a reality in 21st century Wales. The closing date for responses is 31 January 2014. A survey by Spareroom.co.uk estimates that 42% of private landlords in the UK will be increasing their rents in 2014, 26% of which plan to increase prices by more than 3%.

A deal has been made with the European Investment Bank (EIB), which is expected to help deliver up to 4,300 new affordable homes to rent, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government. The deal is expected to release 500 million additional funding to build new affordable homes across the country and is part of the 3.5 billion Affordable Housing Guarantees programme, which enables housing associations to use a government guarantee to secure private investment at more competitive rates. The National Housing Federation (NHF) has published a commissioned graphic report on the role of housing associations in resilient communities, including the different ways they are supporting them and the challenges for the sector. Plans for a new town in Warwickshire have been scaled back, following a consultation with local businesses.

An Ageing Society
The NHS Dementia Research Centre in Hull at the Humber NHS Foundation Trust Memory Clinic, was officially launched this week. The centre will be working on a five-year Promoting Independence in Dementia scheme, which will be rolled out across the region by University College London, Humber NHS Foundation Trust and Hull University, to help identify people in the early stages of dementia to ensure they can benefit from the treatment and support available. Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) has developed a tool to help people working in or developing an integrated health and social care service. It provides a password protected space for guided discussion, agreeing processes and procedures and documents. David Cameron has said the Government will keep the triple lock system for state pensions in the next parliament if they win the general election the lock ensures the state pension goes up by whichever is higher - inflation, wages or 2.5%. A new report from the Institute for Economic Affairs argues that although good retirementincome systems are desirable, it is undesirable to have state welfare systems that encourage early retirement and impose the costs on others and for labour market regulation to prevent those who would like to remain in employment from doing so. The report recommends that the state pension age should be raised to 68 by January 2023 and from then on, should be linked directly to increases in life expectancy. It suggests the state pension should be replaced by compulsory, private defined-contribution pension arrangements similar to Australia. Income from work The Fourth Pillar of Income Provision in Old Age. An interview in the Telegraph with care minister Norman Lamb acknowledges that many older people could be excluded from social care support under current planned reforms and suggests his department is planning to refine its reforms of the social care funding system, which could result in a wider group of older people qualifying for some kind of state-funded assistance.

Other
Youth organisations have criticised the way young people are portrayed in the media and the myths which are sending negative messages to employers about taking on young people.

This Information Bulletin is produced on a weekly basis as an update for staff at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRHT) for the purposes of their work it is not intended to be comprehensive but represents a selection of news and reports appearing in the last week. The items contained in this Bulletin are for information only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the JRF and JRHT.