Let’s fix the housing crisis: Delivering a long-term plan for housing

Monopoly House on a Calculator

National Housing Federation are launching a new report Let’s fix the housing crisis: delivering a long-term plan for housing. It is a call for an ambitious, long-term plan to fix the housing crisis.   

The aim of this report is to set out in more detail what they mean by a long-term plan for housing, and details how they think a plan could be implemented by the next government. It is aimed at key party influencers and manifesto writers and sets out how, through committing to a long-term plan for housing, the government can end the housing emergency and shows what this will mean for the people affected. 

Catastrophic caps – An analysis of the impact of the two-child limit and the benefit cap

In the benefit system, entitlement and need are intertwined: the greater the need, the more benefit income a family is usually entitled to receive. But in the 2010s, two policies were introduced that delinked entitlement and need by limiting the amount of benefits some families could receive: the benefit cap in 2013, and the two-child limit in 2017. At present, nearly half a million families are hit by at least one of these policies. Although the benefit cap affects out-of-work families only, this is not the case for the two-child limit, and six out of ten families affected by the two-child limit today contain at least one adult that is in work.

Closure of high street banks: Impact on local communities

There has been a decline in the number of bank branches in operation in the UK over the last three decades. This has reportedly impacted many people, including those with disabilities, older people and those living in rural areas. In recent years, the government has sought to mitigate the impact of branch closures by introducing legislation containing provisions to protect access to cash services and publishing a policy statement outlining its minimum expectations to banks regarding services being removed or changed.

Shared Parental Leave and Pay (Bereavement) Bill 2023-24

Shared Parental Leave (SPL) and Shared Parental Pay (ShPP) allow the birth
parent (or adopting parent) to curtail the amount of Maternity Leave and
Statutory Maternity Pay or Maternity Allowance (or Statutory Adoption Leave
and Pay) that they would have been eligible for, and instead transfer that
balance to the other parent. Up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of
pay can be shared in this way.

The UK’s Inadequate and Unfair Safety Net

The UK has, in theory, an income safety net to ensure that nobody has too little income to subsist.
Universal Credit (UC) is supposed to provides a minimum monthly income for all working age adults and
their children, provided that those able to work take steps to find employment. Pension Credit provides a minimum income guarantee for those above state pension age. The purpose of these benefits is to ensure that nobody has to be left without financial means; on this basis, some people are excluded because they have savings that they could draw on. But for this to be called a safety net, it needs to be set at a level sufficient to meet people’s basic needs. No government has ever tested benefit levels against this criterion.