The Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Rachel Reeves, announced last week that the Labour party was looking to move to lower the earnings threshold for automatic enrolment in a workplace pension scheme from its current level of £10,000 to the Lower Earnings Limit for National Insurance, currently £5,772 a year. As The […]

The two sets of announcements about benefit cuts, and increases, that were made in the Emergency Budget (June 2010 in the tables) and Comprehensive Spending Review of 2010 (SR 2010) became a headline figure of £18 billion a year in cuts to existing benefits.  That figure is still widely used today although it should be […]

I scribbled some notes yesterday about the suggestion that was made in the Lords, by Earl Attlee a government spokesman quoted below (a), that a room used for work by a tenant need not count as a bedroom for bedroom tax purposes.  I thought I’d pull together those points and add some more. There have […]

“13 Mar 2014 Earl Attlee: My Lords, as I have indicated, we have put out advice to all social landlords on the need to seriously consider allowing their tenants to set up businesses. There is a misconception among social tenants that they cannot run a business from a council flat. They can, but they need […]

Many commentators have pointed out the misleading justifications often made for the introduction of the benefits cap. The government has said that it is unfair that people dependant on benefits should receive more than those in work at the average wage. This message ignores the fact that most workers earning the average wage will still […]

I understand that the UT has set down in CH/140/2013 (a LHA case) that a “bedroom” has a plain dictionary meaning…a room for sleeping / a room with a bed in it. “19. The word “bedroom” is not defined in the legislation. It is an ordinary English word and should be construed as such. According […]

DWP have now told us that the lowering of the benefits cap for childless couples, getting Universal Credit, was ‘an error’ and not a change in policy.

The announcement by the government in the Daily Mail here (didn’t there use to be Parliament and Hansard?) talks only about JSA and Housing Benefit.  This proposal will, presumably, need to be carried into Universal Credit as well.  That should help with the increasing simplicity of the scheme.  There are a few questions about the […]

Firstly, apologies for the long delays in posting things here.  It’s being a busy time, as you’d expect around welfare reform.  I’ve been particularly busy updating our Future Benefits Model (FFBM) with the April 2014 benefit rates and rules and getting the known changes and indexations for the next five years plugged in.  Now done […]

There’s been a lot of publicity over the past week about the numbers of people who have fallen into arrears with their Council Tax and who are being taken to court by local authorities.   I’m very afraid that it will get much worse in the future. Up to 450,000 face court over council tax […]