Welfare rights advisers use the law on a daily basis to challenge decisions on social security benefits and to ensure their clients receive their legal entitlement. However, there are occasions when what needs to be challenged is not a decision which has not been taken in accordance with the existing law, but rather the law itself.
Pantellerisco and others v SSWP CO/3572/2019:
On 12 September 2019, CPAG issued judicial review proceedings on behalf of a single parent and her children challenging the application of the benefit cap to the mother’s universal credit award despite the fact that she works 16 hours per week at national minimum wage simply because she is paid 4 weekly rather than monthly.
21 August 2019
CPAG in Scotland responded to the Scottish Government's consultation on improving temporary accommodation standards to highlight the need to incorporate the impact of social security changes into guidance on the standards.
02 July 2019
Latest DWP figures show a consistent picture since the benefit cap was lowered back in November 2016: almost 75% of all capped households are headed up by a lone parent; a majority of all capped households (56%) are lone parent families with a youngest child under 5 years old; the benefit cap can be avoided by working a certain amount, but the rate at which this happens hovers around the 40% mark; almost 80% of capped households would not have been capped under the original cap.
05 June 2019
Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) is calling for re-investment in social security support for the UK’s children in a new report detailing the costs of restoring a catalogue of cuts to social security - including sub-inflationary uprating since 2013/14 - and providing a blueprint for making universal credit fit for families.
05 June 2019
Universal credit: what needs to change to reduce child poverty and make it fit for families? calls for design and funding changes to improve claimants’ experience of universal credit and to reduce child poverty.
15 May 2019
The Supreme Court has today ruled against a challenge to the Government’s benefit cap policy brought by five* lone parents and their children. Two of the lone parents and their children were represented by Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG).
21 November 2018
The Work and Pensions Select Committee re-opened its inquiry into the lower benefit cap this year. CPAG submitted evidence on the impacts of the lower cap, drawing on analysis of government statistics and cases from our Early Warning System. Following this written submission we were invited to give oral evidence to the committee to highlight our serious concerns about this policy and the hardship it is causing families.
25 October 2018
The number of children living in poverty in the UK is now at 4.1 million and will reach over 5 million by 2021, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. And children who are in poverty are now living, on average, further below the poverty line than they did 10 years ago.
