COVID-19 analysis for Islington

Policy in Practice recently completed reports for the Greater London Authority on The impact of the COVID-19 Hardship Fund on low-income Londoners and The interaction of COVID-19 measures and the Benefit Cap on low-income Londoners. Findings from the latter report were covered in The Observer.

Here are extracts of this analysis that relate specifically to your council.

Contact us to discuss these findings via hello@policyinpractice.co.uk or 0330 088 9242.

Join our online roundtable event on Tuesday 30 June to hear results from our latest analysis on how welfare support policies are impacting low-income Londoners. Click here for details.

Research findings at a glance

  • There are 26.5k households in receipt of CTS in Islington. Their hardship fund allocation of £3.9m covers the 19.0k working age households in the borough
  • The liability covered rises from 68.9% to 79.3%, with the working-age CT bill reduced by an average of £2.36/week
  • Following government guidance on the hardship fund uses up 60.2% of Islington’s total allocation
  • This leaves £1.5m for the borough to use a discretionary pot, funding that could potentially be better targeted using LIFT
  • Taking into account the expected increase in caseload, however, we predict you will have £900,034 remaining

 £1.5m

Potential funds left over

COVID-19 Hardship Fund

  • From the data available at the time of modelling, Islington had a maximum CTS reduction level of 91.5% (91.5% for vulnerable groups). The borough had a CTS cohort of 26.5k, including 19.0k working age households. The total COVID-19 Hardship Fund allocation was £3.9m
  • Prior to the application of the hardship fund, Islington had an average CT liability of £23.78/week, with the borough’s scheme covering an average of 68.9% of household liability

Benefit Cap

  • 255 households (and 564 children) in Islington were affected by the benefit cap before the April 2020 COVID-19 changes according to our engine. This represents 0.3% of the total borough population, and 7.% of the SHBE cohort
  • 246 additional households (329 additional children) were projected to become affected by the benefit cap as a result of the new COVID-19 measures. This represented an increase of 96.5% in the number of capped households
  • The COVID-19 measures brought the total percentage of households capped in Islington to 501, 0.5% of the total population (13.7% of the SHBE cohort)

Hear results from our latest analysis on how welfare support policies are impacting low income Londoners. See how your data is driving these insights.

Tuesday 30 June
14:00 to 16:00

Online roundtable

Menu
Skip to content