Real Life Reform Update

We're incredibly ashamed to say we missed the quarterly update on this in October, but the latest (and final) Real Life Reform report has just been released, and can be found here: http://www.lyha.co.uk/documents/Real_Life_Reform_Report_No6_March_2015.pdf

If you've missed this report up to now, they're quarterly updates on research being done to measure the impact of Welfare Reform on 100 families across the north of England. This is the sixth report, and a summary of the study and research will be produced in June 2015.

We'd recommend taking a look, as they're always interesting (if, unsurprisingly, a little bleak!) but if you want a quick summary, the headlines are:

Debt

• Average household debt is £3,554, which is £1,266 higher than at the start of the study
• One in two households are unable to regularly meet their weekly debt repayments
• Weekly debt repayments average £34.56, 89% higher than at the start of the study and 40% higher than in report 5

Employment

• 23.5% of households are employed, the lowest level in the study, and of these fewer than one in five are in full-time work
• 69% of part-time employed households are looking for more hours

Money left after bills

• Average money left after bills is £17.72 per week or £2.53 each day
• 4 in 10 households have no money left each week
• More than six in ten households have less than £10 per week left after bills

Food and shopping

• One in five have used a food bank
• £3.63 per person per day is the average spend on food
• 3 in every 10 spend less than £2.86 per day on food

Fuel

• 53.8% of households say they aren’t heating their homes to the levels they need