by Gareth Morgan on April 24, 2024
This is a plea for help ( perhaps that’s a bit dramatic?) As well as Ferret’s core benefits and other calculation systems and models (see https://www.ferret.co.uk/) we produce a number of more task focused ‘reckoners’. These little helpers tackle the odd calculations or assessments you might need when you’re dealing with different scenarios. They include […]
by Gareth Morgan 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 […]
by Gareth Morgan 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 […]
by Gareth Morgan 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 […]
by Gareth Morgan on October 6, 2022
The driver for limiting benefits increases, instead of linking them to inflation, appears to be presented as an argument that it’s not fair for working people to receive a 5% pay increase while people on benefits will get around 10%. That seems to be a very simple and easy comparison to make and might appear […]
by Gareth Morgan on October 4, 2022
People know that when their bills arrive, they can either cut their consumption or they can get a higher salary, higher wages, go out there and get that new job – Jake Berry MP. Conservative Party Chairman The ‘fiscal event‘, and its reactions and consequences, are not what I really want to look at in […]
by Gareth Morgan on November 3, 2021
With some very, very boring but pretty important numbers The government has been playing around with the tax and benefit system quite a lot this year. They have increased and decreased rates, tapers, thresholds and other factors with, apparently, wild enthusiasm. All of the announcements have been, predictably, treated as stand-alone elements with those that […]
by Gareth Morgan on March 13, 2021
DWP responses to my suggestions for changing the assessment of earnings. It’s some time since I posted to this blog, not because nothing of interest, or worthy of comment, has been happening, but simply because, like many others, I have been busy. In that, I am lucky; far too many people have been without work, […]
by Gareth Morgan on October 19, 2020
Very pleased that the Work and Pensions Select Committee has recommended that the DWP assess my proposed model of assessment of Universal Credit, which could sort out irregular assessment of earnings and remove the need for a 5 week wait for the first payment. You can read the report at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/135/universal-credit-the-wait-for-a-first-payment/publications/ . It’s pretty wide […]
by Gareth Morgan on June 9, 2020
A brief update to my post on Surplus Earnings of May 24th. The team at legislation.gov.uk have corrected the current version of the Universal Credit regulations and pulled the incorrect consolidated versions , that they said had been provided by the DWP. I have put up a Youtube video trying to explain the serious flaws […]