Focus on welfare reform

Welfare reform and housing

Karl Thomas provides an overview of welfare reform, the possible impacts and what the Welsh Government is doing to help people cope with the changes.

Context

In April 2011, the UK Government embarked on a programme of reform, which will culminate with the phased introduction of Universal Credit between October 2013 and 2017.

The April 2011 housing benefit changes ie maximum four bedroom rate, withdrawal of excess payments, local housing allowance caps and 30th percentile, will impact on over 99% of local housing allowance benefit claimants (48,530) in Wales. The Department for Work and Pensions has estimated that they will be worse off by, on average, £9 per week.

In January 2012, housing benefit for single people under 35 was restricted to the rate for a single room in a shared house. Consequently, approximately 4,000 young people in Wales will be worse off, by on average, £24 per week. This varies between areas. For example in Cardiff, single under 35s renting in the private rented sector and in receipt of housing benefit will be worse off by £54.24 per week. This is a reduction of almost 50%.

April 2013 changes

From April 2013, there will be seven further changes:

1. Local housing allowance rates will increase annually by the lower of either the Consumer Prices Index or Rent Officer valuation. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) estimates that all claimants will lose £6 per week.

2. The benefit cap will apply to the combined income from the main out-of-work benefits, plus Housing Benefit, Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit. The cap will be £500 per week for couples or lone parents and £350 per week for single adults. These caps will impact on around 1,500 households in Wales with an average benefit reduction of £70 per week.

The cap will not apply where someone in the household (claimant, partner or any children they are responsible for and who live with them) obtains work and becomes entitled to Working Tax Credit. In addition, households in receipt of Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payment (from April 2013) will be exempt from the cap. Claimants who have been in employment for 52 weeks or more when they claim benefit will be exempt from the cap for a grace period of up to 39 weeks.

The financial impacts are cumulative. Therefore, it is possible for a family in the private rented sector to be caught by three separate areas of reform – the April 2011 changes (which restricted the amount of housing benefit paid on given sizes of property and removed the £15 weekly ‘excess’), the local housing allowance increase changes and the benefit cap. Based upon DWP figures, the cumulative effect of these three changes would amount to a benefit reduction of £85 per week or approximately £4,500 per year.

3. Working age claimants in the social rented sector who are considered to have too many bedrooms for their needs will have their housing benefit reduced. There will be a reduction in housing benefit towards housing costs of 14% for one bedroom and 25% for two or more bedrooms. It is anticipated that approximately 40,000 households in Wales will lose an average of £11 per week.

4. Council Tax Benefit will cease to exist and will be replaced by a new localised council tax system. Due to the reduction in funding from the UK Government, it is likely that everyone with a council tax liability in Wales will have to make some contribution towards their council tax bill.

5. The Social Fund is also changing with the cessation of the discretionary elements (Community Care Grants and Crisis Loans). Funds for the administration and delivery of new local provision will be passed to the Welsh Government. From April 2013, Northgate Public Services has been awarded the contract to deliver the Welsh Social Fund for a period of two years.

6. Disability Living Allowance will be replaced by Personal Independence Payment with the introduction of ‘objective assessments’ to decide eligibility.

7. Tax Credits – income rises of £5,000 or more during the award year will be taken into account when finalising Tax Credit awards.

Universal Credit

From October 2013, Universal Credit, a new simplified benefit system, will commence rollout. This ‘less complicated’ approach to benefits is welcome but is also potentially problematic. Universal Credit will be paid calendar monthly in arrears and to one named person in the household. Furthermore, all applications for Universal Credit will be made electronically and administered centrally by DWP. It will be rolled out in three stages as follows:

Phase 1 – through brand new claims to Universal Credit from October 2013

Phase 2 – when claimants circumstances change that would have generated a new claim to one of the old benefits (between October 2013 and 2017)

Phase 3 – through a managed process, for when claimants circumstances haven’t changed (by 2017)

Claimants who receive Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, or Pension Credit may be entitled to help towards their mortgage costs. This is known as Support for Mortgage Interest. Under Universal Credit, this will be included as a housing cost. The following rules will apply to this:

• an owner occupier Universal Credit claimant or partner will not receive help with their housing costs if they are doing any paid work
• the qualifying period for entitlement has yet to be announced
• any loans that were taken out to purchase the dwelling occupied as the home and other loans secured on the property will qualify for help (up to a maximum capital limit); the maximum capital limit has yet to be announced
• payments under the scheme will be based upon a standard interest rate which will be the average mortgage rate published by the Bank of England
• when a claimant has received help with housing costs for a period of two years, these payments will stop and will not be reinstated until a claimant has had a break in claim and has served a further waiting period
• there will be no deductions for non-dependants

Discretionary Housing Payments

The UK Government has acknowledged that their reforms will cause hardship and, in order to help those worst affected, have increased the Discretionary Housing Payments fund. The Discretionary Housing Payment fund is financed annually by the DWP, with local authorities being able to match the allocation by up to two and half times. However, as funds are limited and the number of claims increasing, the normal period of entitlement is 13 weeks. Furthermore, the DWP has allowed any under-spend in discretionary housing payments funds to be carried forward (upon application from local authorities) for one year.

Incidentally, the additional £30 million allocated due to the under occupancy rules in the social rented sector are earmarked for those families with fostering commitments and those who have had adaptations undertaken to their homes.

Impacts

Apart from the financial impacts of these reforms, there may be potential social and behavioural consequences. There are concerns that the reforms will impact in devolved areas including:

• health and social services as a result of increased stress and family breakdown
• local government, including a greater reliance on temporary accommodation and increased cases of homelessness, and
• police, as some turn to crime to make up short falls in their rental commitments

Welsh Government action

So what is the Welsh Government doing to help people cope with the reforms? The Welsh Government has been, and is continuing to be, proactive in its approach to these issues. It has provided support for a number of programmes and initiatives:

• the First Minister set up a Ministerial task and finish group with the aims of assessing and monitoring the implications of welfare reform and to consider the cumulative impacts across all Welsh Government policy areas
• the Welsh Government has:
• contributed £120,000 to a national research programme which is specifically considering the social and demographic impacts of the changes so that they can better understand the impacts and be able to tailor support to help the Welsh public
• made £1,500,000 available under the Homelessness Grant Programme during 2011-13 to help tenants and landlords to cope with the reforms by promoting awareness of the changes
• supported local authorities to obtain additional funding and enabling the development of a new website HouseShare Wales, which helps people to find rooms and landlords to find tenants, and
• invested £122,000 in an awareness campaign. This is being delivered by Shelter Cymru and Citizens Advice, with the Welsh Local Government Association and Community Housing Cymru as partners
• The UK Government has set up a number of demonstration projects across the UK, including one in Wales. The projects will evaluate a number of components including:
• switch back mechanisms and repayment of any arrears to social landlords
• financial support and advice, and
• the number of exceptions, where payment would go direct to the landlord – Torfaen County Borough Council, Bron Afon Community Housing and Charter Housing are undertaking this project in Wales.
• The DWP have set up a Support and Exceptions Working Group. Its aim is to:

  ‘…..look at the design and delivery of support needed to help claimants to adapt to Universal Credit. The support could include on-line tools as well as advice and information around financial inclusion and capability. The group would consider the indicators needed to identify claimants, for whom single monthly direct payments might not be appropriate (exceptions), and develop an understanding of their needs….. ‘

  This has been a UK-wide group, but the Welsh Government has agreed with the DWP that there should be a separate group for Wales. Housing professionals and stakeholders will be involved in the group and will be concentrating on supporting the Welsh public through the implementation of Universal Credit.

What next?

This may not be the end of welfare reform, with the UK Government indicating that they need to save a further £11 billion. It would appear from statements made by the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State at the DWP, that benefit payments for the under 25s may be under threat in the future – there are currently around 22,230 people under 25 receiving housing benefit in Wales.

The autumn statement made by the Chancellor on 5 Decemner 2012 did not include measures to reduce or remove benefits from the under 25s, but did set out the following:

• most working age benefits and tax credits, excluding disability
  and carers benefits, will be uprated by 1% a year for three years
  from April 2013
• the basic State Pension will be increased by 2.5% in April 2013
• child benefit is frozen until April 2014 and will then rise by 1% in
  each of the next two years
• local housing allowance will be capped at a 1% rise for each of
  the two years from April 2014, with exceptions for rates in those
  areas in which rent increases are highest
• Housing benefit paid for supported exempt accommodation will
  not be included in the calculation of the benefit cap from April
  2013 or in Universal Credit
• temporary changes to Support for Mortgage Interest are
  extended until 2015/16 for working-age claimants – the waiting
  period will remain at 13 weeks and the working-age capital limit
  will remain at £200,000

More information

The Welsh Government regularly updates its FAQs on welfare reform which are available online at http://wales.gov.uk

The autumnn statement is online at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

Karl Thomas is Head of Rent Officers Wales, Karl.Thomas@Wales.gsi.gov.uk

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The impact of welfare reform

WHQ provides an overview of a number of recently published reports which examined the impact of various aspects of welfare reform.

Context

There is little debate about the fact that welfare reform will affect many households – what is the subject of debate is what the impact will be in practice – will it be positive or negative? Will people be better off if they work? Will the system in fact be simpler? A range of trade bodies, membership organisations, think-tanks and research organisations have recently published reports looking at welfare reform.

Changes to Housing Benefit

The National Audit Office (NAO) examined the role of the Department of Work and Pensions in managing the changes to Housing Benefit. It noted that the DWP ‘faces significant possible complications from household behaviour change and impacts on broader housing markets’. This NAO report considered how the DWP is positioned to tackle the challenges for implementation and in particular how it has:

• assessed the impacts of Housing Benefit reforms on claimants and public spending and taken steps to improve its understanding of impacts over time
• put in place support for claimants to mitigate uncertain adverse consequences
• planned for future risks arising from reforms, particularly as a result of interactions between Housing Benefit and the wider system of housing support

Headline findings included that the DWP expects Housing Benefit reforms to save £2.3 billion a year by 2014-15. The DWP has estimated the direct impacts of reforms on households’ existing entitlements – reforms will result in around two million households receiving lower benefits, with a smaller number of households receiving substantially less. The DWP’s impact assessments are necessarily narrowly focused at this stage and do not reflect the full scale of potential impacts from the reforms. Reforms are placing additional administrative burdens on local authorities and could lead to risks for effective implementation. Many people know very little about the changes to housing support and communication of changes to claimants has been variable. The DWP has anticipated the need to put in place additional funding to support claimants through increased Discretionary Housing Benefit budget. Reforms will put pressure on the supply of affordable local housing; housing market effects present a major challenge for local authorities and other stakeholders.

The report concluded:

‘We see the main ‘unplanned’, and perhaps ‘un-plannable’, challenges facing the DWP as being those areas where the interaction of local authority funding capacity constraints, social housing stock, rental market conditions and the local economy may produce extreme impacts. The DWP’s response will need to be flexible and coordinated well with other sources of support.’

Welsh Tenants looked at the impact of the ‘bedroom tax’ on tenants in Wales. The work combined the 40,000 social housing tenants in Wales who the DWP have modelled will be affected by the bedroom tax with regional modelling of the potential rent loss and concluded that the Wales wide impact would be that social housing tenants in Wales will lose £26.7 million in income in 2013/14.

Universal Credit

Work by the Social Market Foundation noted that low income households in particular were poorly placed to cope with the economic challenges of the recession. 10 million of those in low income households are in unsecured debt and three quarters of those in the lowest income quintile have no cash savings. The resilience of low income households was low going into the economic crisis, and their vulnerability has only increased since then. The report concluded:

‘It remains possible to develop UC to assist with the Government’s aims by offering families on low incomes assistance with budgeting and planning. Behavioural insights and systems can help in this regard. But without them the new system risks harming rather than helping progress to some important goals of social policy.‘

A study commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that Universal Credit (UC) could trap people in poverty unless major flaws are ironed out. The study found support for reform, but identified risks that need addressing if UC is to bring about real improvements for all service users. It found that:

• switching to monthly single payments to households is a significant challenge to low-income families
• the scope and scale of financial support and advice to help people through the transition need urgent clarification. Payments of UC need to be explained clearly and regularly, with the elements intended to support children identified separately
• service users must be informed about how schemes are changing locally. Minimum national standards for face-to-face services and replacements for the Social Fund would help transparency and consistency
• the Government needs to review the impact of localisation on UC’s key aims. If evidence suggests that the main benefits of reform have not been realised, localisation would need reconsidering
• there needs to be a more visible ombudsman for the benefit and employment services system

The Work and Pensions Select Committee looked at the needs of vulnerable claimants within UC. The overall conclusion of their inquiry was: ‘We recognise that the new system will be effective for the majority of claimants but have concerns about the plans in place to take account of some of the more vulnerable benefit claimants.’

Specific concerns raised included:

• the ‘digital by default’ approach which carries a risk that some vulnerable people will have difficulty in accessing their benefit entitlement because they do not know how to make a claim
• there will be a significant increase in demand for advice services during the four-year period of UC implementation, which will place a heavy burden on the advice sector
• some vulnerable households, who already struggle to manage their finances, may not be able to manage a monthly, single household payment
• the default arrangement under UC will be for rental costs to be paid to the benefit claimant who will then pay their landlord, rather than the landlord being paid directly. This represents a major change for many claimants, particularly for tenants in social housing, and some may struggle to manage this new arrangement for rent payments
• there are concerns that some disabled people will be worse off under UC because of the loss of additional disability payments which are available under the current system
• there are concerns about local council tax support. It contradicts the aim of simplifying the benefits system, it risks adding complexity to earnings incentives, and it has the potential seriously to undermine one of the objectives of UC which is to enable claimants to see clearly the financial benefits of taking up a job or working more hours

The overall recommendation made by the Select Committee was that:

‘The Government should reflect on the possible consequences of the scale of the proposed change for some of the most vulnerable people in society and, if those consequences cannot be adequately addressed, should consider modifying its implementation timescale accordingly’

Welfare reform in the context of other cuts

For the past 18 months, the new economics foundation (nef) has been working with people in some of the most deprived communities in Birmingham and Haringey to explore their experiences of the government’s austerity measures and its ambitions for building a Big Society.

Nef reports produced as part of this work have indicated that the main driver of increased local demand for services was the economic recession; unemployment and debt were highlighted as particularly important issues in people’s lives. The most recent report shows show how changes to welfare are now exacerbating these underlying challenges
and driving up demand for local services, as people’s incomes fall and access to
support, such as childcare and social care, is reduced. It notes that:

‘The combined impact of welfare reform and public sector cuts are adding significant pressure to a system that was already buckling under the strain of growing demand and underfunding. As a result, in the short term, charities and communities are under growing pressure to step in where the state has withdrawn. In the long term social crises are likely to build up leading to unsustainable human, social and economic costs.’

Impact on specific groups

The Chartered Institute of Housing looked at whether low income working households be better off with UC than under the current benefits system. It concluded that UC will deliver improvements on the current system but not all low-earning working households will really be better off:

• lone parents with one, two or three children will be worse off across the whole income range than under the 2010 system
• most two child families with a single earner (either a lone parent or in a couple) who earns less than the living wage will be worse off than under the 2010 system. Couples with two children will only be better off under UC when their earnings are more than £247 a week
• couples with three children will be worse off than under the 2010 system if their earned income is less than £300 per week

The results of their analysis suggest that around 400,000 families in low paid work will be worse off with UC than under the pre-reform system.

Based on their analysis, the CIH makes a number of recommendations which would improve circumstances for low earning households, especially those with children. They recommend that Government should:

• boost earned income disregards in UC to give extra support to the lowest earners
• set earned income disregards higher than those proposed in the Welfare that Works White Paper
• guarantee to uprate UC in line with inflation
• extend eligibility for free school meals and ‘BT Basic’ to low earning households
• recognise that people on the lowest incomes will find it hard to improve their earned income because of the cost of childcare and the shortage of full time jobs in the current economy
• encourage creation of greater opportunities for people in work to improve their employment circumstances
• put extra resources into affordable childcare and sub-market housing
• increase the £100 million transitional grant scheme for councils that build work incentives into their local Council Tax reduction scheme

Policis looked at the issues of welfare reform specifically in relation tenants of social housing and concluded that risks hinge primarily on the requirement for tenants to move away from patterns of financial management that have evolved to manage the difficulties of living on a very low income. Minimising risk is the reason why 86% of social tenants believe ‘strongly’ that it is better for Housing Benefit to be paid direct to the landlord. Their work found that risk of failure within the new regime is concentrated in a key segment of vulnerable social tenants, primarily family households and overwhelming weekly, cash-based managers. This group represents some 1.9.million people, 29% of working age social tenants, and would appear both vulnerable and already highly stressed in financial terms.

The work concludes that the evidence suggests that a significant proportion of social
tenants, around a quarter of the total, will require a degree of support if they
are to make the transition to UC without undue risk to their financial well-being. A substantial sub-set of these would seem likely to need some degree of
exclusion from aspects of the regime or to be phased into it.

The Pro Housing Alliance undertook a qualitative study looking at the impacts of welfare reform on private rented sector tenants. It found that welfare reforms are already having a detrimental effect on the health and well being of private tenants who claim Housing Benefit, whether in work or not, yet tenants have little, if any, opportunity, to improve their situation. It concluded that:

‘The impact of welfare reform on the health and well being of the 5 million Housing Benefit claimant tenants living in the PRS, in which over 1.3 million homes are not decent, should be recognised by the Government, with a response that matches the emerging crisis for public health’.

More information

National Audit Office (October 2012) Managing the Impact of Housing Benefit Reform www.nao.org.uk

Welsh Tenants (2012) The bedroom tax project: final report
www.welshtenants.org.uk

Social Market Foundation (September 2012) Sink or swim? The impact of the Universal Credit www.smf.co.uk

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (October 2012) Universal Credit – will the reforms improve the service for service users? Summary – www.jrf.org.uk
Full report – http://cesi.org.uk

Work and Pensions Select Committee (November 2012) Universal Credit implementation: meeting the needs of vulnerable claimants www.publications.parliament.uk

New Economics Foundation (November 2012) Everyday insecurity: Life at the end of the welfare state www.neweconomics.org

CIH (November 2012) Making Work Pay: Universal Credit and Low Income Working Households www.cih.org

Policis (November 2012) Optimising welfare reform outcomes for social tenants – Understanding the financial management issues for different tenant groups http://apo.org.au

Pro Housing Alliance (October 2012) Poor homes, poor health – to heat or to eat?
Private sector tenant choices in 2012. An exploratory study of the health impacts of welfare reform on tenants living in the private rented sector www.prohousingalliance.com

Cuts Watch Cymru www.cutswatchcymru.org produce regular briefings on the numbers of people in Wales on various benefits and on the impacts of benefit changes and cuts to public services.

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Responding to the Welfare Reform Act 2012: an update from Flintshire

In this article, Paul Neave explains how Flintshire County Council and its partners are working together to develop and implement a range of actions to help households, as best they possibly can, to deal with the consequences of the welfare reforms and, very importantly, prevent households from becoming homeless.

Context

The provisions in the Government’s Welfare Reform Act 2012 fundamentally reform the social security system. A significant number of welfare benefits will be subject to amendments. Some benefits will be slightly tweaked (i.e. Industrial Injuries Benefits) while others, such as means-tested benefits, will go through major transformations that will culminate in their abolition following the introduction of Universal Credit. The aim of the reforms is to make the benefit system simpler, to ensure work always pays and to deliver savings of £18 billion from the social security budget by 2015.

Impacts

The Government welfare reforms will, if not effectively and proactively managed, have negative impacts for residents, service providers, businesses and the council. For example, the reforms of the means-tested and disability benefit systems will result in severe financial pressures being placed upon some low income or vulnerable households, reduce spending in the local economy, impact upon the council’s income streams and place unprecedented demands for help upon social welfare advice and support service providers.

In Flintshire, the replacement council tax benefit (CTB) scheme will affect 13,500 households. At the time this article is being drafted there is still vagueness around what the exact funding arrangements will be. However, from April 2013, we do expect that all the households, currently receiving CTB will have to pay at least 20% of their Council Tax bill in 2013/14. This includes 8,600 households who currently do not pay any Council Tax, as their income is deemed too low to be expected to contribute. We have obvious concerns that the Government’s CTB reforms will negatively affect our Council Tax collection rate as collecting small amounts from our poorest households carries a large administrative cost. However, any reduction in our Council Tax income stream will mean that we have less financial resources to provide core and critical services to our residents and to those who visit, or work in, our county.

The Flintshire households that will be impacted by the CTB reforms will include working age households renting from a social housing landlord. Some of these households, according to the Housing Benefit (HB) rules being introduced in April 2013, are under-occupying their homes and will face a cut in their HB entitlement. Flintshire County Council has 1,200 tenants who will have their HB reduced by an average of £12 per week. In total, the reduction in HB paid to the council from Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) is £650,000 each year. We clearly recognise that some tenants, whose household income is already stretched, will find it very difficult to pay their ‘rent top-up’ alongside their increased Council Tax liability. Furthermore, they may also find it challenging to move, in a timely manner, to more affordable and appropriately sized housing, particularly tenants who need a two-bedroom house, as we only have limited numbers of this size of property within our stock. We are also having to re-examine several of our housing policies such as allocations, transfers and rent arrears, to check that they do not conflict with the new HB rules.

According to projections from the DWP, around 4,000 Flintshire households will lose welfare benefit income totalling an estimated £7 million per year because of the sickness and disability benefits reforms. Given the complexity surrounding the objective medical assessment of entitlement to sickness/disability benefits, we question the assumption from the Government that all these households will be able to replace their lost sickness/disability benefit income with earned income. Thus, we expect some of the more vulnerable households in the county will experience the most severe financial pressures and not have the opportunity to alleviate these pressures by going into employment.

In 2010, the DWP made 4,400 Social Fund payments to Flintshire residents with a total monetary value of £500,000. These payments were in respect of grants (£270,000) and interest free loans (£230,000). It has recently been announced that Northgate Public Services will manage the Welsh Welfare Assistance Scheme and we await further details of how the assistance scheme will be delivered locally. However, we expect that the help available to Flintshire residents from April 2013 will not include loans, due to the cost of collecting the loan repayments. As interest-free loans will not be available, we are worried that an increasing number of our residents will turn to the companies that provide easy access to small value loans at significantly high interest rates.

Flintshire’s response

The provisions within the Welfare Reform Act 2012, which aim to simplify a complicated social security system and ensure that work pays, are to be welcomed in principle. However, as outlined above, there are negative impacts inherent within the Government’s welfare reform programme. It is essential that a range of measures are developed and implemented to ensure households are, as far as practical, helped to identify and implement solutions, which will help them to manage their loss of household income and mitigate the full negative impacts of the welfare reforms upon the local authority and the local economy.

Flintshire County Council is currently developing and implementing a long-term and proactive Welfare Reform Strategy to help households impacted by the welfare reforms. The strategy comprises of four major projects:

1. Welfare Reforms – Mitigating Homelessness

2. Social Fund Replacement – Local Assistance Scheme

3. Implementation of the Universal Credit

4. Council Tax Replacement Scheme

To oversee the development and successful implementation of numerous workstreams within the four projects, a dedicated Welfare Reform Programme Board has been established. The Leader of the Council chairs the Programme Board and its membership comprises representatives from all key stakeholders, i.e., Flintshire County Council (Councillors and Officers), third sector organisations, the DWP and the Health Authority, etc.

The key workstreams that are being delivered within the four projects include the following:

• implementing a comprehensive communication strategy to ensure information on the various welfare reforms and their impacts is disseminated to all stakeholders in a timely, easily understood, accessible and proactive manner that maximises the use of technology
• introducing a dedicated ‘Welfare Reform Operational Response Team’ to proactively engage with households who are at most risk of losing household income and assist in the implementation of solutions that will alleviate, in full or part, the difficulties that the households face. For example, assist households to effectively manage their financial commitments and maintain their contractual housing costs, to maximise household income (both in and out of work), and to improve prospects of household members obtaining employment or training, etc
• implementing proactive responses to advise and support Flintshire County Council working age tenants who are under-occupying their home so their long-term housing expectations are managed and they are less likely to accrue rent arrears/face eviction. Our tenants impacted by the HB reforms, are being given the opportunity of a meeting with a member of the housing team. At this meeting, the tenants will be able to discuss the various options they have to try to address any problems that the reduction in their HB entitlement will create. An individual housing support plan will be completed for each tenant identifying the on-going advice and support they need. The positive engagement with tenants being advanced through the under occupancy project, will be continued with all our tenants in order to prepare them for future welfare reforms that will affect them. For example, the financial help towards their housing costs being integrated within a Universal Credit or a Pension Credit award
• designing a training programme, which we will deliver to all service providers who operate within our local communities. The programme will ensure front line staff have a good knowledge of the welfare reforms and possess the skills to be able to confidently provide the initial support and reassurance to their service users who will be impacted by welfare reforms
• developing a range of initiatives to reduce financial exclusion amongst households impacted by welfare reforms. Alongside the two Credit Unions operating within Flintshire, we will proactively promote and increase access to affordable credit, current bank accounts, and, most importantly, improve financial capability within the most vulnerable households
• through the work being lead by the Flintshire Advice Management Board, we are developing a coordinated approach to the planning and delivery of social welfare advice and support services throughout the County and, in doing so, we will ensure the effective and efficient use of all available resources

Conclusion

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 has introduced radical changes to the welfare benefit system and additional changes were outlined in the Government’s 2012 autumn statement. Flintshire County Council and its partners will, in the coming years, continue their proactive approach in order to help and support Flintshire households who are affected by current and future changes to their rights to claim financial assistance from social security system.

For further information on any issue raised in this article, please contact Paul Neave, Flintshire County Council’s Advice and Homelessness Team Manager, email: paul.neave@flintshire.gov.uk