Four housing providers, Riverside, YMCA, St Mungo’s and Salvation Army, commissioned Policy in Practice to analyse how residents are impacted by Universal Credit, and identify improvements. Download Universal Credit and Supported Housing report here.
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LIFT Dashboard user group: 7 ways to make impact and next steps
Leading local authorities met recently at our quarterly LIFT Dashboard user group to share their experiences and the successes they’ve had to turn their analysis into impact. Read about the 7 opportunities the group identified to increase impact using a LIFT Dashboard.
Changing your Council Tax Support Scheme: what are others doing?
Listen back to our webinar to hear guest speaker Clive Jones, Luton Borough Council, talk about why modelling the impacts of different options is the key to designing a new Council Tax Support scheme, and the importance of Member involvement.
Universal Credit can improve lives – but you can’t do welfare reform on the cheap
Deven Ghelani argues that Universal Credit can improve lives but the government must invest if this fundamental change to the benefit system is to deliver on the promise of the concept he helped design.
Benefit Cap: Policy in Practice’s evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee
Policy in Practice today gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee about the impact of the lower benefit cap. This post summarises some of the key points presented before MPs, based on our experience of supporting local welfare providers on the front line.
A data-led approach to tackling homelessness: 7 lessons from Luton Council
Policy in Practice has been working closely with Luton Borough Council, in collaboration with service design agency UsCreates, to build a proactive and data-led approach to tackling homelessness. In this blog post we share 7 lessons learned so far.
Latest analysis: 1 in 7 low-income Londoners can’t make ends meet
Policy in Practice’s latest analysis shows that 1 in 7 low-income Londoners can’t make ends meet. Our analysis of 550,000 low-income London households 21% more low-income Londoners face a cash shortfall since 2016. The number of families who are struggling is expected to triple to 238,000 by 2020.
Use your data effectively to identify and prevent vulnerability
Guest speaker Chris Parker, Newcastle City Council, in conversation with Deven Ghelani, Policy in Practice. They discuss how Newcastle’s approach to tackling homelessness using smart analysis of their existing household level data set.
Total Available Resources: A better measure of poverty
Deven Ghelani was part of a cross-party commission to develop a new measure of poverty, Total Available Resources, that will drive more effective policy interventions.
Managed migration could fix Universal Credit’s image problem
Managed migration should be treated as an opportunity for the government to show that Universal Credit is an improvement on the legacy system. In this blog post, we argue that the DWP can deliver effective support that improves the lives of claimants and supports people toward independence.
Local authority financial resilience: data led early warning systems are key
CIPFA is consulting on its plans to create an index of local authority financial resilience. We support CIPFA’s data led approach. The financial resilience of councils, and households they support, is critical. Councils can and should use their existing data to work on both.
How data and design can tackle homelessness: Luton case study
Policy in Practice and Uscreates are working with Luton Borough Council to show how data and design can tackle homelessness.