Impact of welfare and housing reforms in Hackney

Hackney Council has produced a report looking at the impacts of welfare reforms in the borough. It finds that an estimated 14,000 welfare claimants in Hackney will be affected by changes, with female claimants, single parent families and larger families being disproportionately affected.

Noting the problems caused by ESA reassessments as well, the foreword says while they “fully support the principle of supporting people off welfare dependence and into work this needs to be done with some fairness and humanity and the rush to make budget savings here has run roughshod over these principles.”

A number of recommendations are made, including:

* an urgent need for a digital exclusion work stream;
* planning for impacts of loss of school places, child and adult safeguarding due to forced moves through LHA reforms;
* request for more detail on securing money from the Flexible Support Fund to help third sector organisations working in employment support;
* Jobcentre Plus to ensure that local support and advocacy groups should be given greater scope to assist individuals with WCA appeals
* greater promotion and inclusion of local credit union to support residents’ financial resilience.

For a copy of the whole report, see Impact of welfare and housing benefit reforms

Thanks to Catherine Dempsey, Social Policy Coordinator at Hackney CAB for highlighting this report.