Agenda item

As detailed in the recommendation.

Councillor Mullin introduced the Welfare Reform Update – Including Universal Credit report. 

He explained that the UK Government had been implementing its programme of Welfare Reforms over the last 5 years and by 2020 those reforms would have reduced expenditure on social security benefits available to low income households in the UK by around £31 billion per year.

In order to respond to the reforms, Flintshire County Council had been working with partners in an attempt to mitigate the full impacts on the most vulnerable residents in the County.  The Council’s response to the implementation of Universal Credit was being seen as a model of good practice by other Welsh Local Authorities and the Welsh Government (WG).  He paid credit to officers and in particular to the Flintshire Connects staff who had provided front line digital support to over 1000 customers, helping them to make new claims and also to manage their claims online.

The Benefits Manager explained that the three most significant areas which were having an impact on Flintshire residents were Spare Room Subsidy (bedroom tax), Benefit Cap and Universal Credit.

There were a number of challenges faced which were mainly due to the major change and fundamental differences between Universal Credit and the legacy benefits.  This was due to it being a fully digitised service, paid to the claimant in arrears, managing the whole of the household finances and responsibility for paying rent direct to landlords.

Councillor Shotton welcomed the personal statements produced by the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) that were appended to the report which detailed the challenges faced by people.  There were a number of Councils who were urging UK Government to have compassion and halt the roll-out of the scheme as it was not working.  The impact was evident in other areas and throughout the community and he asked if there was a willingness for the UK Government to learn from their experiences.  The Benefits Manager explained that the UK Government adopted a ‘test and learn’ approach to the implementation and detailed the issues that had arisen, including confusion as to which benefits to claim, delays in payments and payment advances. 

Councillor Thomas provided an example of a situation in her ward where a resident did not have access to digital services which resulted in the Government closing her case as they could not get access to the service.

The Benefits Manager explained that the Council had taken the initiative in working on providing support and solutions to help the most vulnerable residents.  Approximately 90% of the people that had been supported had identified that they had debt issues and there was also an increase in customers accessing pay day loans and doorstop lenders to help to make ends meet until their first payment of Universal Credit was received. 

The Council was putting together an action plan to target support to those households in order to alleviate the impacts and work would also be undertaken with CAB on providing a response to UK Government.  Work was also being undertaken with helping families access the free childcare offer which would help with returning to the workplace.

On the ‘Spare Bedroom Subsidy’, Councillor Roberts commented on the positive shift that should be seen in Flintshire with the introduction of the council house building scheme whereby two bedroom properties were being built, which would allow larger families to move into the bigger houses which would help to eliminate the need for some families to pay ‘bedroom tax’.

            RESOLVED:

That the report be noted and that the ongoing work to manage the impacts that Welfare Reform has and will have upon Flintshire’s most vulnerable households continue to be supported.