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COVID-19 analysis for Tower Hamlets

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 28.2k households in receipt of CTS in Tower Hamlets. Their hardship fund allocation of £4.4m covers the 20.3k working age households in the borough
  • The liability covered rises from 82.0% to 86.7%, with the working-age CT bill reduced by an average of £1.05/week
  • Following government guidance on the hardship fund uses up 25.3% of Tower Hamlets’s total allocation
  • This leaves £3.3m 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 -£1,928,124 remaining

 £3.3m

Potential funds left over

COVID-19 Hardship Fund

  • From the data available at the time of modelling, Tower Hamlets had a maximum CTS reduction level of 100.0% (100.0% for vulnerable groups). The borough had a CTS cohort of 28.2k, including 20.3k working age households. The total COVID-19 Hardship Fund allocation was £4.4m
  • Prior to the application of the hardship fund, Tower Hamlets had an average CT liability of £21.74/week, with the borough’s scheme covering an average of 82.0% of household liability

Benefit Cap

  • 483 households (and 1,252 children) in Tower Hamlets were affected by the benefit cap before the April 2020 COVID-19 changes according to our engine. This represents 0.5% of the total borough population, and 13.% of the SHBE cohort
  • 232 additional households (406 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 48.% in the number of capped households
  • The COVID-19 measures brought the total percentage of households capped in Tower Hamlets to 715, 0.7% of the total population (19.3% 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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