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Income support breakdown
Our local council are looking at the amount they will be reducing council tax benefit under the new rules.
Has anyone got a breakdown of how income support/JSA should be allocated?
How much to cover food, travel, clothing etc.
As we are looking at people having to pay 25% of their council tax which would be equal to 10% of JSA each week.
Thanks.
I’m not sure that there is such a breakdown anymore - means-tested benefits have been uprated by CPI/RPI for many years now and as far as I am aware, don’t have any precise allocations for different items or spending. Unless anyone else knows different?
Last time anything like this was done was prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 under the Speenhamland system where relief was set in proportion to the price of bread but even this doen’t come close.
A little bit more recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation did a report dealing with the question. “What income do people need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living?”
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/MIS-2012
Probably not much help as benefit rates generally don’t get close
I have a vague memory that there was something in, or pre, Sup. Ben. which did this. I’m not in the office but I’ll have a dig next time I’m in our library.
The Living Costs and Food Survey (formerly the Family Expenditure Survey) provides some breakdowns, by expenditure category, region, etc. This is what the Common Financial Statement referred to above is based on. Note, this is a survey of what people actually spend, not a report about what they need to (or should) spend.
Thanks for all your replies, as we thought no up to date information available.