International evidence has shown that devolution of welfare-to-work schemes to local authorities can improve services – if funding and accountability challenges can be overcome.
There has been very little frontline progress on the delivery of the government’s Universal Credit benefit reform, despite £700m having been spent on it, the Public Accounts Committee said today.
David Cameron has said a future Conservative government would consider cutting benefits for people with conditions such as drug and alcohol addiction or obesity if they do not agree to treatment.
The government’s Universal Credit benefit system is being rolled out across the UK from today, marking the start of what work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith is calling a ‘cultural change’...
Government and councils have been urged to consider how expansion of payment-by-results systems to pay for public services can work for vulnerable people with multiple needs.
Government cuts to benefits mean total welfare spending will be £16.7bn lower by the end of the parliament than it would have been without the changes, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found.
Low-income families with children and the very well off are the two groups that have lost the most from the coalition government’s changes to tax and benefits for working-age people, the Institute...
The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen below 6% for the first time in six years, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics today.
Over 8 million UK families with children – more than one third – now have less than they require for a socially acceptable standard of living, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Whitehall incentives for local authorities to tackle Housing Benefit fraud and error are weak and being compounded by cuts in funding available to councils to administer it, the Public Accounts...
More than a million unemployed people are receiving no government support to get back into work as they fall between cracks of different national schemes, an analysis for the Local Government...
Councils in England will face an average cut in spending power of 1.8% in 2015/16, local government minister Kris Hopkins has announced, but London boroughs and urban authorities will face larger...
Cities should be given greater financial incentives to tackle poverty by being allowed to retain more of the savings made from cutting unemployment, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said.
Auditors today said they are not yet able to judge if the government’s flagship Universal Credit reform to the welfare system will achieve value for money.
The government’s flagship Universal Credit welfare reform has begun to accept claims from families as part of the phased rollout of the controversial scheme to create a single benefit from six...
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has today warned that number of people in poverty is likely to start increasing due to caps in the uprating of benefits coupled with an increase in wage rates.
The government has succeeded in cutting spending on civil legal aid following reforms to provision, but it is not clear whether the changes have also been effective in targeting support to those who...
Government changes to benefits and tax credits, intended to save nearly £20bn in the current financial year, have produced only £2.5bn in cash savings, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies...
The number unemployed people in the UK fell by 115,000 to 1.96 million over the three months to September taking the unemloyment rate to 6%, according to the Office of National Statistics.
The government’s flagship Work Programme has not been successful in helping hard-to-help jobseekers into work, a report by the Public Accounts Committee has found.
Withdrawal of Council Tax Benefit has resulted in a postcode lottery for households that can’t pay part of the bill. Local authorities are also feeling the effects, with arrears on the increase
The number of people in absolute poverty in the UK could be as much as 300,000 more than government estimates due to the higher rates of inflation experienced by poor households, the Institute for...
