WIREDGOV

Blog posted by: Paul Anderson Wednesday, 26 August 2015 - 4:04pm

The latest on what we know about the changes to Housing Benefit for 18-21s. 

As Parliament has been in recess for the summer it has been a quiet time around the proposed changes to housing benefit for18-21s during August. However, we’ve used the past month to continue to talk to the Government about our concerns around the policy and to make an ongoing case for robust protection to ensure nobody becomes homeless as a result of the proposals.

There was a more general announcement made last week by Matt Hancock, the Paymaster General, in the Cabinet Office as to what the Government’s new ‘Youth Obligation’ will look like. The information largely chimes with the feedback we have been given elsewhere.

Some of the language appears very strong, to show the public how seriously the Government takes the issue.

The headline of the press release is The government details radical plans to end long-term youth unemployment and decades of welfare dependency.  It then goes on to say that the Government wish to create what they are calling a “no excuses” culture to support youth employment. This is coupled with talk of “boot camps” to get young people ready for work.

Moving beyond style to substance, the list of measures set out include:

1. a new ‘boot camp’ to get claimants work-ready within 6 months
2. young claimants must take a job, apprenticeship, traineeship, unpaid work experience or lose benefits
3. under-21s will no longer receive housing support
4. 3 million more apprenticeships to be created by 2020
5. changes to youth benefits come into force in April 2017.

These are only top-line announcements and in practice there is likely to be a tougher conditionality regime from day one. Young people will have to be “earning or learning” immediately. We are presuming this will be applied to those making new Universal Credit claims from April 2017.

From Homeless Link’s perspective, we believe that the activity which claimants are obliged to undertake needs to be tailored to the individual and focused upon helping young people develop the skills they need to thrive in the labour market. We hope the Government will address some of the difficulties of previous schemes (such as the high-profile Poundland case) where the quality of placements has been questioned and where communication with claimants has been poor.  

Furthermore, the commitment to significantly increase apprenticeship placements is welcome because it has been publicly reported that they have struggled to find employers for previous community work placement schemes.         

Our sanctions report, A High Cost To Pay, which was researched after changes to the conditionality and sanctions regime in October 2012, showed how vulnerable people can be disproportionately affected by toughening of conditionality rules. Significantly, our evidence found that young people were the most likely to be sanctioned amongst the whole of the homelessness population. 

To avoid this happening again, we hope that a constructive dialogue will take place with agencies, such as homelessness organisations, who work with vulnerable young people as to how to make the ‘Youth Obligation’ as effective as possible. We believe it needs to be dovetailed with other work focused upon ensuring that conditionality and sanctions regimes do not operate counter-productively.    

On a technical point, a couple of agencies have contacted us due to confusion with point number 3 above, as it states that ‘under-21s will no longer receive housing support’ rather than 18-21 year olds. We have clarified with Government that the policy will, as previously reported, cover 21-year olds and that there will be exemptions in place for vulnerable people. Of course, exactly who these exemptions will cover is still under discussion.

In September we will be sending out our annual Youth Homeless Survey which will provide invaluable intelligence and data on youth homelessness for our meetings and discussions with Government. Watch our website for more details.