The government is continuing to be extremely generous…to itself? – NLW 2024

by on November 22, 2023

An updated version of the blogs which were posted here in November 2022 and April 2022.  This now uses the NLW figure of £11.44 an hour and the 10% employee NI rate, announced in the Autumn Statement of 22nd November.  The message is the same. The real winner from the NLW increase is the Treasury.  […]

Mortgage help, for claimants with earnings, begins again in 2023

by on June 21, 2023

Those with long memories may remember the days when the means-tested benefits system offered real help to those with mortgages. Payments to lenders contributed, sometimes generously, to the liability of borrowers for interest payments. There has never been any help towards capital repayments within the benefit system. Things changed in 2018.  Mortgage interest help, as […]

Childcare and the 2023 budget -still real problems

by on March 15, 2023

Today’s childcare announcements in the budget are welcome, they are more helpful than the current support. The changes will make a real difference. Piloting incentive payments for childminders, increasing funding to nurseries providing free childcare, and changing minimum staff-to-child ratios from 1 staff member for every 4 children to 1 to 5 may help increase […]

Automating Benefits – a reality check… and a proposal

by on March 6, 2023

There has been increasing discussion and interest, recently, in the idea of using existing data, particularly from benefit claims, to determine or automatically award other benefits for people who are entitled. It would be a very attractive way of solving, or reducing, the enormous under-claiming of many benefits. After all, its proponents say, if we […]