By Richard McKeever
We at Community Links have been a part of the CREATE Consortium since its inception. The campaign calls for changes to benefit rules which would enable community organisations to pay people to do work that strengthens their neighbourhood without it affecting any of their benefits.
In a guest blog here CREATE Consortium co-ordinator Naomi Alexander updates the campaign progress.
Well, we finally have some news from the governments Department for Work and Pensions about the Community Allowance.
We (Steve Wyler, Executive Director of the DTA, Aaron Barbour, Head of linksUK 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 only for 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 since Friday and we 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 try 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 interested, or you’d like to discuss the practicalities of becoming a pilot partner please email me (and copy in Jess Steele the Chair of the CREATE Consortium j.steele@dta.org.uk).
Depending on the level of interest, we will set up a short selection process that enables us to choose three pilot locations and partners. The aim is 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 as soon as possible after that.
It’s a challenging timescale, especially as it’s over the summer whilst people will be taking leave, but if you’re up for it – we’re up for it!
We’ve come this far and now 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 up 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.
Naomi Alexander
Email: n.alexander@dta.org.uk Web: www.communityallowance.org
Btw, can anybody tell me why, after thirteen years of the current lot in power, and numerous ministers for ‘welfare reform’, there hasn’t been any welfare reform?
Why have we been paying taxes to fund these people?
Well,it would appear that as somebody in receipt of JSA, I will not be eligible for community allowance, despite a large degree of community activism. Perhaps I should have stayed on incapacity benefit and not attempted to deal with my depression by my involvement in community matters.
I have been praised by officials working in my local authority (Peterborough City Council) for my determination and high level of community activism. I have to explain that such praise doesn’t pay the bills and members of my extended family just assume I’m a layabout because of the extended time I have spent on JSA.
I struggle to keep paying my bills but the DWP fail to help people in my position. In the end our country needs REAL root-and-branch reform of our outdated, expensive and highly-inefficient welfare state. Despite being in the middle of the general election campaign, none of the major parties are willing to offer this. All we get is tokenism and the ‘community allowance’ is part of that.
Instead of bolting another ’solution’ onto the end of the pipe, why not go to the source of the problem?
It may be better to create a ‘citizens allowance’ available to all, rather than create yet another benefit, providing more for the DWP to do.
The DWP cannot provide solutions. It IS the problem.
*rant over*
Bill, we have to be pragmatists. Of course our main objective is getting the DWP to allow anyone, on any benefit to be able to go on the Community Allowance. We continue to lobby for this on both sides of the house.
But we have to work with what we’ve got at the moment. Once we’ve proved the CA works for people on IB/ESA then we will be in a strong position to argue for a rollout to other benefits.
The DWP are showing their ususal conservatism and it is hard to see how a pilot limited to those on Employment and Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit is going to achieve much.
I can see the ‘foot in the door’ argument, but in that a change of government is almost inevitable within the next 12 months might it not be better to concentrate on trying to persuade opposition politicians of the vaildity of the concept.