Plans to launch the Universal Credit across the country over the next four years were ‘overly ambitious in both the timetable and scope’ and suffered from weak management, the National Audit Office...
More people could choose to start receiving their state pension as soon as they are eligible, following planned changes to deferment payments, consultancy Hymans Robertson has warned.
Fewer than a quarter of people whose benefits will be cut by the government’s welfare cap will be able to mitigate the effect by taking on more work or moving to cheaper housing, the Local Government...
An independent Scotland would retain the household benefits cap introduced by the UK coalition, though possibly at a different level, First Minister Alex Salmond said this weekend.
Independence would allow Scotland to redesign its benefits system around its relatively older population, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Campaigners against the ‘bedroom tax’ have lost a High Court challenge, it emerged today. Judges ruled that the changes to Housing Benefit rules did not unlawfully discriminate against disabled...
Local authorities should gain new powers to ‘drive out’ bad landlords from the private rented housing sector and reclaim Housing Benefit when property conditions fall below legal standards, MPs said...
The High Speed 2 rail project should be scrapped and the money re-invested in a massive housebuilding drive, an influential Conservative commentator told the CIPFA conference
The youngest adults are the least likely to be sympathetic to poor people or proud of the welfare state, Ipsos Mori chief executive Ben Page has revealed today
A majority of local authorities in Scotland say that an increase in rent arrears in council housing is a result of the government’s changes to the welfare system, including the so-called bedroom tax.
Local government leaders have repeated calls for powers to tackle youth unemployment after a survey revealed that jobless young people had little faith in the government’s national approach.
Pressure on public sector budgets has led to a rise in zero-hours contracts, particularly in the care sector. The biggest losers are vulnerable service-users and staff on poor pay and insecure hours...
Welfare spending is to be capped to control the overall cost of the benefit bill from April 2015, Chancellor George Osborne announced in the Spending Review.
The government’s Troubled Families Programme is to be expanded to provide targeted help to an extra 400,000 households at risk of suffering from a number of social problems, the Treasury has...
MPs today urged the Department for Work and Pensions to check what help will be available for benefit claimants when the internet-based Universal Credit is introduced later this year.
Scotland could provide its own pensions and benefits systems immediately after independence, but it would be better to share administration with the rest of the UK for an interim period, Deputy First...
The Treasury is clamping down on annually managed expenditure to cut the welfare bill. A far better strategy, argues James Lloyd, would be to split the DWP into two, with a ministry for working-age...
Councils should take a flexible and fair approach to poorer residents who get into arrears as council tax support is cut away, Citizens Advice said today.
