Only a couple of days to go until our conference in Durham. Just a quick reminder that we have The Right Reverend Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham, as our honoured guest. We are very proud to have secured such a high profile speaker to give our first annual Phil Hanns Memorial Lecture. In a week where the Church has criticised benefit sanctions and other delays as key contributors to UK poverty, it is timely that we have the Rt Rev …
Eri Mountbatten writes: NAWRA members will be aware of prominent reports being published that have highlighted significant problems with the application and administration of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and by its contractors, most notably Atos. In July 2014, the Work and Pensions Select Committee published their report on the WCA and called for a “fundamental redesign of ESA”. Following that report, in August 2014, NAWRA published its own response to the …
NAWRA has submitted a response to the Social Security Advisory Committee consultation concerning the government’s intention that ‘surplus earnings’ from the previous six months should be taken into account when a person reclaims universal credit (UC). The proposal suggests that any ‘surplus earnings’ – defined as earnings more than just £100 (less than £25 per week) over the ‘nil UC threshold’ – will be used to reduce future UC payments if the claimant returns to UC within six months. NAWRA …
At our Glasgow conference today we heard an impassioned appeal from Dr David Webster, from the University of Glasgow, for the current sanctions regime to be abolished. Some links to Dr Webster’s research, his presentation at NAWRA and some further resources that may be of use to advisers are available in the members’ area.
A key element of NAWRAs objectives is to seek to influence government proposals and existing legislation by utilising the expertise of our members. So that we can feed in to the first review of Personal Independence Payment assessment we need your data on how well this has been working (or not working). To make it easier to get your feedback, we drafted a brief surview. The review closes on 5 September so we need your responses as soon as possible. …
