Policy reforms: a year of highlighting improvements to clients’ lives
Policy reforms: news of Citizens Advice research and campaigns as the year ends.
It has been a momentous year for Citizens Advice policy research and campaigns at local and national level. On behalf of clients we got involved in:
- proposals for general election manifestos
- full Autumn Budget
- a questionable end to the cost-of-living crisis: yes inflation fell but….
- deep soul-searching about the level, purpose and future of essential benefits.
All these meant our focus hardly strayed from the difficulties of families and individuals in greatest need and insecurity.
A new government raises hopes of new approaches but we begin 2025 tackling most of the same problems. However our job is to go on highlighting clients’ needs and proposing improvements to current policy and practice. Recent activity looks forward to policy reforms affecting work and social security, housing, public services.
Benefits
‘Get Britain Working’ is the government’s plan to reform ‘the root causes of inactivity’. It intends changes to health, education and benefits starting with a white paper. Our early response is research among local clients on the problems they experience in accessing the benefits they are entitled to receive. We note and support plans for major changes to Job Centre Plus and the role of work coaches in support of job hunters.
This would be an important improvement but we will make the case for giving equal attention to creating an accessible and compassionate social safety net.
Housing
Nothing is more important for raising the living standards of many of the people we help than access to decent secure housing.
We will continue to make the case for urgent reform to housing benefit and the rental market but are also a determined approach to the development and construction of more affordable homes in the borough.
Public services
At Citizens Advice we know local public services can be particularly important to many clients. The Budget contains increases for health, education, transport we hope will have a recognisable impact at local level.
We also note a significantly different direction for local government department funding, a 9.7% funding increase for 2025-26 over 2023-24. If this does help improve ‘discretionary’ services – youth centres, community support, libraries and the rest – many clients will benefit.
Our new MP Helen Maguire
Meeting our new MP, we were pleased to learn that Helen Maguire shares many of our priorities. She is concerned about housing policy, homelessness, the cost of living and use of food banks. We look forward to working with Ms Maguire and her team for the benefit of constituents in 2025 and beyond.
Data Insights: abuse of women and girls
In the last Citizens Advice Data Insights event of 2024 Jess Phillips MP and other experts explored the increase in cases of abuse and violence against women and girls.
They covered the scale and nature of abuse and the essential policy response in the context of CA national data; for example, since 2019 the number of women seeking CA crisis support has grown far more quickly than men regardless of their employment, age or health. Anyone concerned about these issues who missed the webinar can watch back here and view the data here.
