It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
Ahead of the Autumn Statement, organisations representing children’s doctors, school leaders and social workers have joined Child Poverty Action Group in calling on the Chancellor to uprate benefits from April at least in line with September’s inflation rate as usual.
Today the DWP published the latest data on the outcomes of tax credit claimants who have been sent their ‘migration notice’. This is a letter informing people that they have three months to make a claim for universal credit (UC), at which point their tax credit payments will be terminated. The data reveals that 16,000 people sent a migration notice did not make the transition to UC and had their legacy benefits terminated. This equates to 27 per cent of those who have been sent a migration notice and reached their deadline (based on those sent a migration notice in the first half of 2023).
Our UK Cost of the School Day programme, carried out in partnership with Children North East, has been transformative for schools and pupils. An independent evaluation of the project between 2019-22 highlights its impact on families, schools, local authorities and the wider education system.
CPAG in Scotland’s Early Warning System has been operating for ten years! Over Challenge Poverty Week we are looking back at some of the social security events in this period, key findings from the Early Warning System and how they have influenced policy and practise. Today we are looking back at universal credit and how Early Warning System evidence can influence its future.
Last week, the House of Commons’ Education Committee published a report on persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils. There is growing concern about rising levels of pupil absence following the pandemic. Attendance data highlights that children from lower-income households have lower attendance rates than their peers. Children eligible for free school meals are more than twice as likely as their peers to be persistently absent from school.
Struggling families would be substantially worse off than they were five years ago if benefits are not uprated with inflation, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows.
As more families migrate from older benefits to universal credit, new official figures show there are 2.3 million children in households on universal credit (UC) which are having debt deductions from their benefit, forcing them to live on significantly less than their entitlement.