COVID-19 analysis for Southwark

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 25.2k households in receipt of CTS in Southwark. Their hardship fund allocation of £3.5m covers the 16.4k working age households in the borough
  • The liability covered rises from 75.4% to 89.6%, with the working-age CT bill reduced by an average of £2.61/week
  • Following government guidance on the hardship fund uses up 64.1% of Southwark’s total allocation
  • This leaves £1.2m 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 £1,073,509 remaining

 £1.2m

Potential funds left over

COVID-19 Hardship Fund

  • From the data available at the time of modelling, Southwark had a maximum CTS reduction level of 85.0% (85.0% for vulnerable groups). The borough had a CTS cohort of 25.2k, including 16.4k working age households. The total COVID-19 Hardship Fund allocation was £3.5m
  • Prior to the application of the hardship fund, Southwark had an average CT liability of £19.25/week, with the borough’s scheme covering an average of 75.4% of household liability

Benefit Cap

  • 220 households (and 663 children) in Southwark were affected by the benefit cap before the April 2020 COVID-19 changes according to our engine. This represents 0.2% of the total borough population, and 7.9% of the SHBE cohort
  • 151 additional households (290 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 68.6% in the number of capped households
  • The COVID-19 measures brought the total percentage of households capped in Southwark to 371, 0.3% of the total population (13.4% 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

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