Millions of families will make a Universal Credit claim in the coming months, many of whom will turn to local authorities for support for the first time. We work with councils to show the cumulative impacts of welfare reforms on people and help target personalised support.
Local authorities are set to lose vital admin data on vulnerable low-income families, currently collected via Housing Benefit. As Universal Credit rolls out, this information will disappear, drastically limiting councils’ ability to support people. There is no arrangement between DWP and councils to systematically share similar admin data available through Universal Credit. Local authorities have a statutory duty to support their most vulnerable residents, and have good reasons to be concerned.
Not replacing the adminstrative data available from Housing Benefit with Universal Credit is a huge mistake. Not only will this undermine local authorities’ ability to fulfil their statutory duties but may also result in higher costs to the public in the form of increased demand for temporary accommodation, increased levels of indebtedness and a less effective use of public resources.
We call on the Government and Parliament to urgently consider how to share Universal Credit data between the DWP and local councils across the UK. Please join us.
How the LIFT Dashboard can help you support vulnerable households as they move onto Universal Credit.
As Universal Credit rollout continues, Policy in Practice is helping councils to track and have visibility over around half (40%-60%) of all households on Universal Credit.
Families are tracked through their Council Tax Support claim data, meaning it is focused on the lowest income households on Universal Credit. Our advanced analytics engine enables us to learn more about the household, and match families to past records.
Local authorities will continue to have a statutory responsibility to support their most vulnerable households, even as Universal Credit rolls out. They will be supporting pension age households, and families in temporary, emergency and supported accommodation through Housing Benefit, and need to have sight of those on Universal Credit as well.
Policy in Practice’s Leading Lights Network is engaging with DWP on how to make relevant information on Universal Credit claimants available to councils, and other government departments. We have shown how this data can be used to make government services better targeted, and help improve outcomes.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
How the LIFT Dashboard can help you tackle homelessness and meet the requirements of the Homelessness Reduction Act.
How the LIFT Dashboard can help you spend your DHP money well.
Previously we took data from different systems and manually tried to identify those that needed support. Or we just put a form to apply for support on our website. But we wanted to identify those people that were in crisis – to be proactive rather than reactive. LIFT allowed us to move away from the traditional approach and run highly targeted campaigns. Within a fortnight, we had identified 100 vulnerable households and supported 95 of them.
Pat Knight
Service Manager (Revenues and Benefits)
There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing that we’ve identified an issue and can tell the story of what we’ve done to help. Recently, the LIFT platform identified that we have 5,187 households estimated to be in food poverty.
Margaret Gallagher
Head of Performance & Business Intelligence
Using LIFT, we have already identified 299 cases in fuel, water and food poverty and in crisis, at risk or struggling. We are able to tailor support depending on each individual circumstances and people are pleasantly surprised that we are calling to help.
Jane Worrell, Folkestone and Hythe District Council
LIFT has revolutionised the way we work and propelled the amount of support we can offer our customers. Using LIFT, we have assisted 3,482 households which included 4,860 children. This past year we have assisted our residents to claim an additional £7 million of unclaimed benefits which helps them individually and also helps our borough.
Julian Clift, Sutton Council
One of the things that I like about the LIFT dashboard is that you can narrow it down into very specific groups or cohorts and look at the types of issues that need to be addressed from the perspective of the residents.
Amma Antwi-Yeboah, London Borough of Redbridge
We’ve only had the LIFT dashboard for about 18 months but it’s invaluable. We can get so much data from it that we can provide to members who may have concerns within their ward and it’s the baseline start for all of our campaigns.
Dawn Cove, London Borough of Redbridge
We used LIFT to target those who should be eligible for a DHP. In November we had 26 applications for DHP with 22 awarded and in December we had 72 applications and 62 awards. So our numbers reflect that the campaign did have an effect with maximizing people’s income.
Nick Harvey, Folkestone and Hythe District Council
One of the first households identified by LIFT as at risk was behind in their council tax, tax debt, and they had liability orders. Because of the money that we were able to get for them, they cleared the old debt and they are now currently paid to debt for 2019 and 2020.
Nick Harvey and Jane Worrell, Folkestone and Hythe District Council
With LIFT we can see our caseload changing and the different types of households that are being impacted by the economic downturns. This lets us understand how we can reflect our support to match the impact that’s occurring as people move off housing benefit and predominantly onto Universal Credit as they become made redundant. We can be specific with our targeting of resources of help, which we wouldn’t be able to do without the LIFT Dashboard.
Clive Jones, Luton Borough Council
The more timely your data, the more powerful it is. If you want to operationalise the information you’re using it’s absolutely critical that the data is timely.
