Successful Parliamentary Event for the Community Allowance

On Monday 2nd November we held an event at the Houses of Parliament, hosted by Lord Archy Kirkwood, a Liberal Democrat Peer who supports the Community Allowance campaign. Lord Kirkwood used to Chair the DWP Select Committee and said at the event, “When I first heard about the Community Allowance, I thought the DWP will never go for this, but I’m really pleased to see how much progress has been made.”

Over 60 people attended the event which was held to do three things:

1. to launch a new publication from the CREATE Consortium; a collection of essays from people across the political spectrum saying what they think about the Community Allowance

Contributions came from people as varied as Lord Adebowale, Chief Executive of Turning Point, Phillip Blond, Director of new think tank ResPublica, Sir Trevor Chinn, businessman, Hilary Cottam, Director at Participle, Julian Dobson, Editor of New Start, Will Hutton, Executive Vice-Chair of the Work Foundation, Glenn Jenkins, resident and Chair of Marsh Farm Outreach, Luton, Neil O’Brien, Chief Executive of the think tank Policy Exchange, Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam GB and Julia Unwin CBE, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation amongst others.

We will be publishing their contributions to this blog over the next few weeks.

2. We also launched a new report by the think tank nef (New Economics Foundation) a predictive Social Return on Investment analysis of the Community Allowance. This predicts that for every £1 invested in the Community Allowance £10 worth of social value will be generated.

3. We announced our three pilot partners for our first pilot of the Community Allowance over the next couple of years. They will be introducing themselves in more detail on this blog over the next couple of weeks but for now, they are:

Foresight in North East Lincolnshire

Learning Links in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight

St Peter’s Partnerships in Manchester

We were overwhelmed by the number of exceptionally high quality proposals that we received from community organisations across the UK that wanted to pilot the Community Allowance. It was a very difficult decision making process and we wish we were able to work with more of the organisations who sent proposals to us. It shows what a need there is across the country for an initiative such as the Community Allowance and has made as more determined than ever to keep working until it’s available for anyone on any benefit anywhere in the UK.

Work for Your Benefit pilots announced

You may well have missed the somewhat depressing news that the DWP are going to pilot Work for Your Benefit sanctions in both Greater Manchester and across the counties of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

This will affect the projected 2% of Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimants who are unable to find work after 2 years of support and interventions through the Job Centre Plus and Flexible New Deal. However, Job Centre Plus advisors can refer people on JSA to do 6 weeks of Work for Your Benefit at any point from the start of their claim.

Work for Your Benefit will make people on JSA work for 30 hours a week (where possible placements will be of benefit to the community) in return for their benefits. They also have to undertake up to 10 hours a week of supported work search activity. The DWP are currently asking for organisations to express an interest in running the pilots.

We have had grave concerns about this initiative since it was first suggested by the Conservative Party and then included in the Government’s Green Paper on Welfare Reform. Here’s why: 

The Recession and Rising Unemployment

• It’s dangerous to associate community work in the public mind with ‘scroungers’ being punished, particularly during a time of rising unemployment. Community work is a great opportunity – part of the carrot, not one of the sticks. Getting people engaged in their communities is a crucial element in tackling worklessness and poverty, by maximising the opportunities that exist for part time, sessional and irregular work in deprived communities.
• With rising unemployment and increased competition for all jobs, it is likely to be those that are furthest from the labour market and most excluded for socio-economic reasons that will still be unemployed at the end of 2 years. Intervention in a community setting for this demographic should be supportive and enabling, not punitive.

 The DWP’s own research shows that ‘workfare’ doesn’t work

• Their research into the effectiveness of workfare programmes in the US, Canada and Australia found that overall the Work for Your Benefit approach is not effective.
• Work for Your Benefit is least effective for individuals with multiple barriers to entering the labour market
• Welfare recipients with multiple barriers often find it difficult to meet obligations to take part in unpaid work. This can lead to sanctions and, in the most extreme cases, the complete withdrawal of benefits that leaves some individuals with no work and no income.
• Some states in the US have scaled down large-scale, universal workfare programmes in preference for ‘softer’ and more flexible models that offer greater support to those with the most barriers to work. This includes a greater reliance on subsidised jobs that pay wages rather than benefits to participants.
• Subsidised (‘transitional’) job schemes that pay a wage can be more effective in raising employment levels than Work for Your Benefit programmes.
• Workfare is not only inefficient; it is unfair too, because it exploits the unemployed people forced to take part. If a job is worth doing it is worth being paid the rate for that job. Unemployed people on workfare schemes would be paid less than half the national minimum wage.

Government doesn’t understand the Community Sector Labour Market

• The labour market in poor communities creates predominantly part time, sessional and irregular jobs that reflects a national shift away from a 35 hour week towards a labour market that is more dynamic. Many of these are ideal ‘entry level’ jobs that could be a first step into work for the long term unemployed.
• The Work for Your Benefit pilots do not recognise the nature of the community sector labour market. It will be problematic to generate enough full time community work for people to do in their own community to sustain full time activity. 
• Transporting people out of their community to work in other communities displaces local ownership of work that is undertaken to improve a community. Local ownership is of crucial importance to the effectiveness and sustainability of community work.
• Additional transport time on top of full time activity will be very problematic for many people, particularly those who are single parents. Experience in the US, recounted by Alison Benjamin in The Guardian, illustrates how dangerous this can be, as the impact on children can be damaging, particularly when there is no rise in income associated with the parent’s absence.

We believe that the Community Allowance should be piloted as an alternative to Work for Your Benefit for people on JSA as part of an ‘enhanced stage 3 option’. We know hundreds of community organisations across the UK that would jump at the chance to work with Job Centre Plus on this, creating thousands of new paid jobs in the process. 

News from DWP

Well, we finally have some news from the DWP about the Community Allowance.

We (Steve Wyler, Executive Director of the DTA, Aaron Barbour, Head of Links UK at Community Links and me) went to a hastily arranged meeting with 6 officials from the DWP this morning to discuss our Right to Bid proposal that we submitted back in January.

We’ve got through two rounds of intensive scrutiny and evaluation from across the Department and they wanted to give us their feedback.

Because the last Secretary of State, James Purnell, said that people on Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) would not be eligible for the Community Allowance, our bid, which includes a lot of detail about people on JSA is not eligible for funding and they are rejecting our proposal as it stands.

While we are obviously really disappointed that this is the decision after all the work that has gone into getting this far, there is still hope.

They have asked us to write another bid (!) as they are keen on the Community Allowance concept and can see the value in piloting it to test the approach. They have given us some guidance as to how we should re-shape the bid to stand the best chance of being approved. This includes:

• Re-shaping what we would deliver through the Community Allowance for only people who are on Employment and Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit
• Scaling back the pilot programme from 15 pilots across the UK to just 3 pilots as the Right to Bid process is targeted at funding small scale activity that can act as the DWP’s research and development arm to test out new ideas and add value to their existing work
• Choosing which three pilot areas it would be piloted in and having identified lead community organisations in each area before the bid is submitted
• Ensuring that each of these pilot areas fits within Job Centre Plus and Pathways to Work provider boundaries, which are different to local authority boundaries
• Beginning to develop a dialogue between the community organisation(s) running the pilot and local Job Centre Plus and Pathways/FND providers in each area
• Including more of a focus on how many people will move into jobs as a result of the activity, specifying which of these are part time, full time and sustained over a 26 week period

We have had lots of discussions about this today and think it is worth being pragmatic at this stage and moving ahead with another bid as outlined above. At the same time we will continue our lobbying and campaigning work to convince politicians that the Community Allowance should be available to anyone on any benefit and trying to get the scope of the pilots extended to include those on JSA at a later date. What do you think?

We would like to hear if community organisations are still interested in being pilot partners under this scaled back version of a Community Allowance pilot. If you are, or you’d like to discuss the practicalities of becoming a pilot partner please email Naomi Alexander (n.alexander@dta.org.uk) and copy in Jess Steele the Chair of the CREATE Consortium (j.steele@dta.org.uk).  Jess is available to discuss your potential involvement over email over the next two weeks while I am away on leave. I will then telephone all organisations that have expressed an interest during the week commencing 20^th July.

Depending on the level of interest, we will then set up a short selection process that enables us to choose three pilot locations and partners. The aim is then to get the new bid to DWP for their end of August selection panel, so that we have a decision in September and a contract signed and monies flowing to pilot partners by as soon as possible after that.

 It’s a challenging timescale, especially as it’s over the summer and people will be taking leave, but if you’re up for it – we’re up for it!

 We’ve come this far and have an opportunity to get something up and running next year that will begin to demonstrate how the Community Allowance could work. It may not be what we know is needed in our most deprived communities but it’s a start and we have no intention of giving up. With your involvement we will keep the pressure on politicians to realise the full potential of the Community Allowance over the long term.

 We look forward to hearing what you think.

 Thanks so much for your support.

A busy few days

It’s been a busy time recently, what with the resignation of both Hazel Blears and James Purnell, the two Secretaries of State we have worked hard to influence. Hazel, in particular, was a strong advocate for the Community Allowance and we are waiting with some trepidation to see what the new Ministers will make of it.

Yesterday I went to a quarterly meeting of the Community Sector Coalition, in part to brief the Chief Executives of the member organisations about progress on the Community Allowance and in part to talk to Phillip Blond, who was there talking about his Progressive Conservatism project.

It was an interesting discussion about what builds associative behaviour and the need to broaden and pluralise our notions of ownership. All stuff that has been the bread and butter of the community sector but it was refreshing to hear it talked about with such passion and clarity from a Conservative.

Phillip suggested we write a list of all the harmful things the state does to the community sector. No doubt the benefits regulations will be in that list. He has kindly agreed to write a piece for a booklet we’ll be publishing later in the summer about the Community Allowance.

Yesterday came the depressing news that unemployment has reached a new 12 year high, with the CBI predicting that there is worse to come, estimating that unemployment will reach 3 million by 2010.

Then today the Equality and Human Rights Commission released a report that unsurprisingly shows that people in deprived areas are being worst hit by unemployment.

All this points to a need for a Community Allowance now more than ever. We have been advised that the DWP will be making a decision about our Right to Bid proposal next week and have written to our supporters asking them to write to Yvette Cooper, the new Secretary of State for DWP, letting her know just how important a Community Allowance could be in these difficult economic times.

We believe it will:

• Encourage positive behaviour – people doing good in their communities – creating role models and turning problems into solutions
• Generate thousands of new jobs at a micro level in the poorest areas – laying the foundation for resilient communities
• Turn the welfare safety net into a springboard – helping people bounce back rather than sink down in the recession

If you can see the need for a Community Allowance in your community please take the time to write to Yvette Cooper today.

This campaign started back in 2001 from the grassroots experience of hundreds of people across the country, drawing on their frustrations and aspirations for what could be achieved if the benefits system supported rather than held back community regeneration. It has built on the momentum created by the New Start/Urban Forum campaign a few years ago and over the last year has involved hundreds more people across the UK in letting James Purnell MP know how important a Community Allowance could be in transforming lives and communities.

Let’s not let all this effort go to waste.

You can write to her at:

Yvette Cooper MP, Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions,Caxton House, Tothill Street, London, SW1H 9DA

Good news from the DWP!

Our Right to Bid proposal for a £2.2 million programme of activity in 15 different areas across the UK has got through the latest stage of assessment from the DWP. At a two day meeting held in Sheffield on 27th – 28th May, civil servants from across the Department considered several Right to Bid proposals and the Community Allowance pilot programe was one of the few to go through to the next stage.

A civil servant from DWP said they were “very keen on the Community Allowance proposal, but could give no guarantees at this stage that it would definitely go ahead”. The bid will go through a further scrutiny process within DWP with operational and policy staff exploring the impact a pilot programme would have on the DWP’s work. DWP indicated that they are more likely to approve a pilot of ESA/IB client groups rather than JSA as there have been so many initiatives aimed at this group in the recent budget.

The DWP indicated that the Right to Bid process should come to an end in a matter of weeks, but is unable to give a definite date as this is the first time the Department has run an initiative like this.

We’ll keep you up to date with the negotiations through the blog – let us know what you think of the progress so far.

Speech at DTA National Policy Symposium

Hello Everyone. My name is Naomi Alexander and I’m here to talk to you about the CREATE Consortium’s campaign to establish the Community Allowance as part of the UK benefits system.

 Our work focuses on the intersection between the benefits system and community regeneration.

 The story of the Community Allowance started back in 2001 at the first meeting of the National Community Forum, when all 24 community activists from across the country unanimously agreed that the benefits trap was one of the biggest barriers to achieving neighbourhood renewal.

 The benefits trap is an unintended result of the benefits system as it is currently structured. The cost to the nation goes far beyond the impact on individual benefits claimants and their families. Whole communities are caught in this trap and so too are our attempts at neighbourhood and civil renewal.

 We spend £92 billion a year on benefits payments.

 Not in administration, not in employment support, but the actual weekly payments.

 This £92 billion is the national bill for the most elaborate and complex poverty trap imaginable. It provides few stepping stones to avoid or escape the trap.

 At the heart of the trap is the ‘earnings disregard’, which is the amount you are allowed to keep on top of benefits if you do part time work – literally, the earnings disregarded by the benefits system.

 Shockingly, for people on Job Seekers Allowance, the ‘earnings disregard’ still remains at the same level it was in 1988: £5 a week – less than an hours work on today’s minimum wage. 

 I’m sure I’m not the only one in this room to see a cruel injustice in a country that has allowed MPs to freely dip into the public purse to fund lavish lifestyles, spending £600 on pot plants. While someone receiving Job Seekers Allowance of £60.48 a week will have penny for penny taken back by the state for anything they earn over £5. 

 Not only that, but people who declare paid work that is less than 16 hours a week can have their payments thrown into chaos for months, often leaving them with nothing to live on and facing threats of eviction.

 Where is the incentive to get try and back into work? And what does this system say about the way we view benefits claimants?

 I’d like to show you a short film we made last year about how these issues are played out on one estate in Milton Keynes. 

 Through the Community Allowance campaign we have been asking whether there is a way of seeing the benefits spend differently. Is it possible to see benefits as an investment in some of our most deprived communities, rather than as a drain on tax-payer’s money? Could we see it as a hand up and not a hand out?

 The Community Allowance is a proposal to enable community organisations to pay local unemployed people to do part time or sessional work that strengthens their local community and for those people to be able to keep their benefits and keep what they earn on top of their benefits, up to a maximum of £86 a week, which is the equivalent of 15 hours a week on the minimum wage.

 If implemented, the Community Allowance would provide small, manageable and supported stepping-stones for people to begin the journey off benefits and into work.

 At the heart of the Community Allowance is part time and sessional work of the kind Lisa wanted to get going on her estate. As we all know, such work plays a major role in the community sector, with so many potential jobs that can help deliver positive change. Many of these jobs come in at under 16 hours a week, which if you’re on benefits, is the magical but somewhat random ‘safe’ number of hours you can work and have your benefits protected as tax credits kick in at this point.

 What could be achieved if on every estate there were jobs for 2 hours running a lunch club for older people, 4 hours doing detached youth work, 3 hours doing community health work or 2 hours running arts or sports classes. We’ve all seen how this work can really change people’s lives!

 However, policy makers attach a low value to this kind of community activity. It certainly seems that the DWP don’t always view it as ‘real work’ as it doesn’t fit their model of a 16 – 40 hour working week. Yet this kind of work can have a transformative affect both on the confidence and skills of the individual doing it and the community benefiting from the activity.

 Since we started the campaign we have achieved a great deal through the work of all our supporters.

 Over 3000 people have visited the Community Allowance website and we have attracted over 100 organisations to back our call for a Community Allowance pilot, most of who have written directly to James Purnell and Hazel Blears calling for a pilot programme. 

 Last summer, our intensive lobbying was rewarded with a commitment to pilot the Community Allowance in the Community Empowerment White Paper produced by DCLG – they have been fantastic advocates for the Community Allowance across Government.

 In the autumn, the Department for Work and Pensions included a commitment to pilot the Community Allowance in the Welfare Reform White Paper for people on Employment and Support Allowance. This is a significant step forward in being able to realize our goal, but we still have a long way to go.

 We are trying to achieve our ultimate goal of the Community Allowance for anyone on any benefit. Earlier this year we submitted a proposal to DWP’s innovative Right to Bid scheme, for £2.2 million to run a pilot programme with 15 community anchor organisations across the UK.

 We’ve got through to the last stage of assessment and civil servants from across DWP are meeting next week to make a decision. We know that the Directors across DWP have been discussing the Community Allowance.

 While its good to know we’re having an impact on DWP thinking, it’s important to keep in mind the wider context of the recession and the impact this is having on the lives of millions of people across the UK.

 Yesterday I spoke to a manager of a Citizens Advice Bureau in Cornwall. He told me that since last year he has seen a 103% increase in enquiries related to mortgage repayments and repossessions and a 336% increase in enquiries concerning redundancy. Earlier this year Save the Children took the unprecedented step of giving cash handouts to families in the UK, something it usually reserves for disaster affected communities in developing countries. These are sure signs of a society under stress. The Community Allowance is needed now more than ever.

 Despite this, both Labour and the Tories are still talking about bringing in ‘work for your benefits’ schemes.  Mandatory, full-time, unpaid community work for those who have been on JSA for more than two years. In the interests of state choice and procurement rules, this could be delivered by public, private or voluntary sector, ‘depending on who does it best’. I’m sure this audience would agree that using community work as a punishment for being out of work during a recession is a disastrous mistake. We need to make absolutely clear that we as a sector will not endorse it.

 Community work can be a carrot not a stick. 15% of the population, or 8 million people, live in ‘deprived areas’, and changing those areas is not just about squeezing people into a job at Tesco. The costs of ongoing deprivation to society and the state go way beyond the welfare cheque – eating into our taxes across health, drugs, crime, prisons, housing, social work, policing, and the enormous burden to the future caused by poor educational outcomes.

 The community sector has been saying for a long time that we need to show government just how much is saved by sustained, deep-rooted community work.

 How much better would it be, how much more would we save, if the people doing the community work were those most at risk of the benefits trap?

 This week we are pleased to announce that one of the UK’s leading think tanks, the the New Economics Foundation, will be conducting a Social Return on Investment study on the Community Allowance, thanks to the support of our funder, The Hadley Trust.

 We’re going to incorporate the NEF findings with think pieces from leading lights on the left and right of the policy spectrum, including Julia Unwin who spoke earlier and Phillip Blond, senior advisor to the Conservatives. We will be taking this evidence to the three main political party conferences in the Autumn, challenging politicians to see how the Community Allowance can ‘lift’ a whole community, increase confidence and pride, bring out the best in people and stimulate local economic activity.

 To sum up:

 We believe we need to change our approach to worklessness in order to achieve neighbourhood renewal, community empowerment and social justice

 We need to integrate welfare with regeneration, creating jobs for people who live in the area being regenerated.

 We need to fight the old ideologies, not by saying ‘it’s not fair!’ but by creating a positive vision of how different things could be

 We need to challenge Britain, the 4th richest country in the world to live up to its ideals and to use the Community Allowance to see the potential of benefits spend as an investment in our most deprived communities.

 If you agree, we would love to involve you more in the work of the CREATE Consortium, especially during our work this conference season. Please get in touch and together lets work to make the Community Allowance a reality.

 Thank you for listening.

 

A new blog from the CREATE Consortium

The Community Allowance would enable community organisations to pay local unemployed people to do work that strengthens their neighbourhood, without it affecting any of their benefits.

This is the new blog from the CREATE Consortium – keeping you up to date with news and views as the campaign to establish the Community Allowance in the UK benefits system develops.

The team behind the posts are Naomi Alexander, CREATE Consortium Co-ordinator and Jess Steele, CREATE Consortium Chair. We hope you enjoy the blog! If you have any suggestions about things you’d like to hear about, let us know.