UK Poverty Post

Heating or Eating – no one should have to choose

A household is said to be in ‘fuel poverty’ if it needs to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel to in order to maintain a satisfactory temperature. The latest Government figures show that there are 5.5 million households in this situation.

We are living in financially difficult times and everyone is feeling the pinch and having to tighten the purse strings. Now, following the announcement of rises in the price of gas and electricity by fuel giants [...] Continue Reading…

Raising benefits in line with prices is the very least we can do

Last week, rumours abounded that the Treasury was considering increasing benefits by less than the rate of inflation. The inflation figure for September tends to be used each year as the reference point for raising benefit and pension levels in line with the cost of living. But there have been rumblings that this year’s level, 5.2%, is too high, and that raising benefits by that much would be ‘unfair’.

Average earnings are rising at less than the rate of inflation, [...] Continue Reading…

Whose Economy? Starting the conversation towards a fairer Scotland

Several key messages were generated by the discussions in the Whose Economy? seminar series – which resulted in a series of papers now available here – and not the least of these was the importance of forensic social science in identifying and analysing who benefits and who loses from current economic structures and processes.  Underpinning this was the commitment and freedom of social scientists to undertake such action research with passion and objectivity.

It followed from the ensuing debates over [...] Continue Reading…

The People’s Budget – our communities’ right to budget

Thousands of people are involved in the tough decisions about spending priorities for 10-18% of the mainstream council budget.
Which British city am I describing? Well I’m actually talking about Brazilian cities transformative experience of Participatory Budgeting. But it is this experience of widespread and deep public involvement in how to spend local public money that is the inspiration for the new “People’s Budget” campaign.
Eleven year’s ago Oxfam Brazil facilitated a visit by Manchester community activists to witness the significant [...] Continue Reading…

My experience at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty

Last Thursday (20th October) the inaugural annual lecture of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Poverty – chaired by Kate Green OBE MP – took place in the Houses of Parliament. The Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, addressed the audience – made up of organisations that work with poverty in the UK and several MPs.Antony Metcalfe, manager of the Fairbridge programme in Wales and one of our partners present at [...] Continue Reading…

How hungry do people in the UK have to be?

Food poverty has been hitting the headlines recently, as UK hunger spreads. At FareShare the charities we serve have seen a 40% increase in demand for food in the past year, with many reporting that as well as supporting rough sleepers, asylum seekers and the vulnerably housed there are now young families and pensioners queuing for food too.

Why is this happening? Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows 5.8 million people in the UK [...] Continue Reading…