Author Archive

Sanctions: the graph lines that keep on climbing

December 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

Read our new blog which comments on the latest DWP statistics for sanctions on benefit claimants. Is there a connection to the growing use of food banks?

Sanctions: the graph lines that keep on climbing

December 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

The latest DWP statistics show ever more sanctions being imposed on claimants. Is there a link with food poverty? Janis Bright comments on Dr David Webster’s latest statistical briefing

People sanctioned by the welfare system are having to ‘rely on the kindness of strangers’, according to the YMCA. The UK’s oldest youth charity cites the sanctions regime introduced in 2012 as the ‘main cause’ of the rise in food banks. To an extent, the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into hunger agrees, saying sanctions are among the reasons for more people turning to food banks. And then there are widely publicised individual cases like that of John McArthur, Read More

Disability: a flashpoint in the debate on welfare policy

December 10, 2014 Leave a Comment

Read our latest blog and briefing paper on the ongoing attempt to ‘rewrite the welfare contract’ for disabled people and the arguments on this controversial topic within UK welfare policy.

Disability: a flashpoint in the debate on welfare policy

December 10, 2014 Leave a Comment

Peter Dwyer, Jenny McNeill, and Lisa Scullion introduce our latest briefing paper, on disability and welfare

Welfare conditionality has only relatively recently been extended to disability benefits. The change has brought reclassification of some people as fit for work, alongside increased requirements for many others with impairments to undertake job search and training activities or face harsh benefit sanctions. All of that has made the rights and responsibilities of disabled people a flashpoint of recent welfare reforms.

Job Opportunity: Research Fellow (Maternity Cover)

December 1, 2014 Leave a Comment

The Sustainable Housing & Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at the University of Salford has an exciting opportunity for a researcher to support our research activities for a fixed term period and help shape and deliver its growing portfolio of work. A significant component of the role will be to engage, as the University of Salford partner, with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change.

Funded PhD Opportunity

November 19, 2014 Leave a Comment

We are pleased to announce an opportunity for a funded PhD at the University of Salford.

Exploring the impact of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants in the UK

Supervisor: Dr Lisa Scullion

Successive Governments have sought to extend the use of welfare conditionality, as a defining feature of many recent welfare reforms. At the same time, successive Governments have also increasingly curtailed migrants’ rights to welfare in the UK. Literature that explores welfare to work policy in relation to migrants and ethnicity suggests that discriminatory attitudes may be significant in influencing both higher levels of sanction and lower quality of support for migrant communities.
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Conditionality and rights and responsibilities of migrants

November 6, 2014 Leave a Comment

In the next of our series of blogs highlighting the project’s briefing papers, Peter Dwyer and Lisa Scullion examine attitudes to migration and conditionality in the UK.

Migration, it seems, is never far from the minds of politicians and the public alike. Only last week the government minister Michael Fallon spoke of certain towns being “under siege, [with] large numbers of migrant workers and people claiming benefits”. Although he has since apologised for his remarks, and accepted he should have used less emotive language, the rights and responsibilities of migrants who enter the UK to live and work and the impact that migration may have remain subject to contentious debate. Read More

Conditionality and Offenders: Pushing individuals into the peripheral labour market?

October 29, 2014 Leave a Comment

Professor Del Roy Fletcher introduces his briefing paper on conditionality and offending:

Offenders have traditionally been subjected to sanctions and support in the criminal justice system to promote behavioural change. This approach is increasingly defining their experience of the benefits system. Successive UK governments have sought to help offenders into work as a means of reducing the high rates of re-offending. This has extended the active welfare state into the criminal justice system and led to a close alignment of welfare and criminal justice policies (see DWP and MOJ Joint Strategic Review of Offender Employment Services). It is in this context that offenders have been targeted for specific behavioural measures and this is the focus of the next in our series of briefing papers. Read More

Broken Britain? Welfare Conditionality and Anti-social Behaviour

October 16, 2014 Leave a Comment

In the next of our highlighted briefing papers, John Flint explores anti-social behaviour in relation to conditionality.

The riots in English cities in 2011 magnified debates about the extent to which a ‘Broken Britain’ had emerged in which urban disorder, and more mundane but persistent anti-social behaviour, were manifestations of crumbling community fabrics, declining citizen responsibility and a failing criminal justice system. Despite the furious debates following the summer of 2011, tackling anti-social behaviour has not been given the rhetorical or legislative prioritisation by the Coalition that had characterised the New Labour administration and, in particular, the personal commitment of Prime Minister Tony Blair to a ‘Respect Agenda’ which had seen a plethora of new measures and the introduction of the now infamous ASBO. However, as our recently published Briefing Paper: Anti-Social Behaviour discusses, the Coalition Government has recently introduced the new Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.

Enforcement, coercion and interventionism: evolving responses to homelessness and street culture

October 6, 2014 Leave a Comment

Part of our series highlighting the recently published briefing bapers, this blog by Sarah Johnsen examines the current state of conditionality and homelessness.

Earlier this year, the installation of ‘spikes’ to deter rough sleepers from bedding down in the doorway of a luxury London apartment block prompted a social media storm and widespread public outrage. Attempts to make towns and cities less conducive to rough sleeping do in fact have a long history in the UK and overseas. They first hit the headlines in the USA, when a number of metropolitan authorities installed ‘anti-homeless sprinklers’ and seats that were impossible to lie on within public spaces. Here in the UK, the practice of gating off alleyways or removing seating is relatively commonplace in areas deemed to have a rough sleeping or street drinking ‘problem’.

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Latest Comments

You also have an exact and clear idea of how all this affects people who are actually caught up in it. Unfortunately, the people who are responsible for these policies and decisions have never had to deal with it so there is no understanding and no empathy. We are losing our humanity in today's society.
Jeanette Smith posted this comment on Bedroom tax, benefit cuts and sanctions – the fear factor and the cumulative effects

Why would people then bother to make a home and spend money on it? We have to get away from this mindset that has now taken hold that Social Housing.....hate that term, is just temporary to suit your immediate needs. People should not have to up sticks all the time because a child gets older etc. When the old system was in place ie older people with larger homes than they needed they were offered incentives to downsize. In the 90's more Older peoples accommodation was built. Bungalows, Sheltered Housing etc. People were given help with removal costs. This has all changed. To make someone move from a home they have been in for years is cruel if it is not voluntary. I have been in my home since it was built. My daughter moved out as she should when grown up to make her own home. So after 23 years with roots well and truly down, should I be made to move? I have my granddaughter to stay. My daughter's room is now for her and was also an office when I worked from home. I could not fit my home into a small 1 bedroom flat. I do not want people living above me. This idea that if you live in Social Housing it is just accommodation but if you own it is your home is totally wrong. My parents moved willingly into Sheltered Housing but the change affected them drastically. My dad became stressed and ill and died a year later and my mother never settled and died a few years later. This was because they uprooted themselves and left their home and all the memories and familiar surroundings. Unfortunately like most issues these days, the humanity is being taken out of it.
Jeanette Smith posted this comment on The fear factor - Bedroom Tax and benefit cuts

Great resources on linking welfare sanction and conditionally and key social policy considerations with human rights principles (including dignity, non-discrimination). These considerations have a huge impact in narratives around poverty and vulnerability, and should be closely looked at by policy decision-makers and street-level bureaucrats.
Alexandra Barrantes posted this comment on International conference - presentations

Ok. I don’t agree with the bedroom tax but I do feel it would be a better option if housing rules were changed. For example why do they wait until kids are over 10 until giving families two bedrooms? Then I also think housing should be fit for purpose so I believe when they move someone from a one bedroom to a 2 or 3 it should be with the understanding only until the children grow up and leave home then they should have their Tennancy moved back to something more suitable again like a one bedroom.
Tabatha Gracie posted this comment on The fear factor - Bedroom Tax and benefit cuts

A fine well written and clear example of what is broken in our welfare system. They are asking for submission for the next select committee meeting on welfare and I would submit this post if it were my choice. It is a vicious cycle for some who have no chance of finding work however hard they might try. It is the employers who ultimately make the decision if employees are fit and ready to work, not the DWP. Having a budget of £2 per day for food , job searching activities, keeping your appearance and strength up, and having to jump through hoops and tick boxes on all those strength zapping, soul destroying schemes courses and programs that do nothing but heap yet even more pressure and stress. The affects of stress on both mental and physical health are well documented and nothing can be more stressful than not knowing week in, week out, that your hand to mouth existence is constantly at risk. Sanctions are death sentences for some, no getting away from that fact, those charged with administrating the regime should hang their heads in shame, it is those who should make the stand to bring about change. Or do they deceive themselves into believing long time shirker Jim who they sanctioned last month and who has not been seen again at the local JCP, Is now enjoying the fruits of his labor thanks to the Works Coaches helpful push they so desperately needed. So clearly sanctions work and a good done job done by me, high five everyone.
paul posted this comment on Bedroom tax, benefit cuts and sanctions – the fear factor and the cumulative effects