INTRODUCTION TO OUR CAMPAIGNING

Our work achieves its most effective and long term impact when it leads to changes in the law and government policy. Our parliamentary lobbying and campaigning is based on our casework. We have firsthand experience of the difficulties the poor and vulnerable face as a result of regulations and policies, or the lack of them.

Please click on the titles below to find out more about our campaigns.

Our Current Campaigns:

1. Minimum Income Standards
   The fundamental cause of our clients' problems is incomes which are too low to support a healthy existence. The work that we developed on the adequacy basis for income standards has lead to a body of research including calculations of minimum income levels required for healthy living produced by both the Greater London Authority and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. 
   There are 71 organisations supporting our petition for minimum income standards as of November 2009.
    
2. Housing
   The complexities of the welfare system often create rent arrears for the vulnerable debtors we serve. This issue is also an essential part of our lobbying for minimum income standards because the payment of arrears out of poverty incomes damages the well being of many individuals and families.

   The lack of sufficient social housing also leads to a large proportion of the overall welfare budget being spent on paying rent to private landlords, and to very poor standards of housing occupied by those on low incomes.

   Z2K Housing Review
   In the summer of 2008, our consultant Professor Peter Ambrose together with Jack Adams from the Human Rights TV, started producing The Z2K Housing Review, an online video journal dedicated to exploring and promoting ideas around housing policy in the United Kingdom. It is also available on Human Rights TV.
    

3. Powers of Bailiffs/Enforcement Agents
   The enforcement industry uses methods which show no respect for the vulnerable and which increase the burden of debt upon the poor inappropriately and unnecessarily.
    
4. Welfare Reform Bill
   We support in principle the policy of helping the unemployed find work, which should lift them out of poverty and the introduction of a single organization to be contacted by welfare applicants for all benefits; but the fully-evidenced inadequate levels of unemployment benefits and the failure of the national minimum wage to lift people out of poverty are ignored in the White Paper and in the Gregg and Freud reports on which it is based.

   There are several issues of concern in the Bill, among them are:
    - The administration of sanctions
    - The effects of sanctions on the well being of children
    

5. Child Poverty Bill
   We fully support the aim of the Child Poverty Bill to reduce the  number of children in poverty, which using the relative measure of assessing family income after payment of housing costs and taxation is currently 4 million and more.

   Our main concerns about the Bill include:
    - Enforceability of obligations
    - Incorporation of well being principle
    - Minimum income standards
    - Measuring success
    

6. Consumer White Paper
   In July 2009, The Department for Business Innovation and Skills published Consumer White Paper – A Better Deal for consumers, aimed to provide “real help now for people in financial difficulties”.

   Our response to this White Paper concentrates on the issues of which we have direct experience through working with the most disadvantaged and they are:
    - The need for an improved Social Fund
    - Cap on interest rates/lending criteria
    - Protocols for enforcement
    

7. Fuel Poverty
   As energy prices increase, those on benefits (including pensioners) and minimum wage level earners are falling into arrears. Power companies usually install a prepayment meter which charges the highest energy tariff. It is set to recoup arrears, pay for advanced usage of energy, and recover the cost of the court order for installation of the meter.

   Fuel Direct scheme is a better alternative, allowing power companies to deduct the arrears directly from the customers’ benefits but it is now only used as a last resort. We are continuing to find allies in a campaign to remove restrictions on this scheme so that it can replace the prepayment meters.
    

8. Affordable Credit
   Many clients suffer increased deprivation as a result of exploitation by door to door lenders who target those experiencing emergencies and who lend at extortionate rates without any proper investigation into the borrowers means or circumstances. We are campaigning for a cap on the interest rates through the Consumer White Paper.