DPAC: What happens when central funds to local authorities are not ring-fenced?
Disabled
people have been expressing their disquiet at the news that the Independent
Living Fund (ILF) will cease to exist in 2015, and that the money will be
transferred to Local Authorities. To date, out of the 153 surveyed Local
Authorities and from 106 responses, only 10 Local Authorities have said they
will ring-fence the transferred funds to ILF recipients, which means that in
all other areas, ILF recipients face a potential reduction of their care
packages. How is it likely to happen?
An
interesting article was published this morning by Joe Halewood (@SpeyeJoe):
which
shows that 16% (UK average) of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) allocated
by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to Local Authorities to mitigate
the impacts of welfare reforms, and specifically of the infamous bedroom tax
have been awards unrelated to welfare reforms. See Table 5 and 6 here:
It would
be interesting to know what the money was spent on, but more to the point, DWP
has twice relied on the DHP argument to win a legal case against claimants
challenging the bedroom tax policy, and although DWP’s spokesperson said that the
government has put in £345m to mitigate the bedroom tax, the figures shown in
the Table 5 and 6 not only disprove this but also show that, out of the money
disbursed, 16% of the allocated funds have been used for awards totally
unrelated to welfare reforms.
This
shows that disabled people are right to be worried about the future of the
transferred ILF funds and about the willingness or unwillingness of Local
Authorities to allocate these funds to disabled people who have been assessed
as having the greatest needs. The ILF should be retained until assurance is
given that these people will not see a reduction in their care packages.
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