Insights archive
From firefighting to reform Revenues and benefits at the edge of another year of change At the final Independent R&B Monday Discussion Group before the summer break, practitioners reflected on tight budgets, difficult system…
Read articleThe latest Monday Independent Revenues and Benefits Discussion Group opened in familiar style, with Malcolm Gardner easing the group into the session through light conversation about the recent heatwave and the programme of conferences…
Read articleThe Independent Revenues and Benefits Monday Discussion Group on 30 March ranged across three familiar but connected themes: supported housing, local government reorganisation and the latest poverty figures. What tied the conversation together was…
Read articleThe latest Independent Revenues and Benefits Monday Discussion Group took the Chancellor’s Spring Statement as its starting point and asked a simple question: what does it really mean when viewed from the frontline of…
Read articleThe Independent Revenues and Benefits Monday Discussion Group spent much of its 2 March session exploring a question that is rapidly moving from policy theory into operational reality: what does the changing world of…
Read article19 January 2026 (12:02pm) The group marked “Blue Monday” with a mixture of humour and hard reality: policy change arriving at speed, year-end pressures stacking up, and councils trying to keep services stable while…
Read articleSummary of participant views – 24 November 2025 This week’s Monday Discussion Group opened with a sense of déjà vu. With the Budget only days away, Malcolm Gardner remarked that most of its contents…
Read articleIndependent Revenues & Benefits Monday Discussion Group10 November 2025 The latest Monday Discussion Group, chaired by Malcolm Gardner, explored pension credit take-up, changes to notional pension income rules, and the real impact of the…
Read articleIndependent R&B Monday Discussion Group – 20 October 2025 The latest Independent R&B discussion opened with Malcolm Gardner wryly noting that the week’s agenda looked like “a bit of a hodgepodge”—ranging from procurement headaches…
Read articleIt was a damp Yorkshire morning when Malcolm Gardner opened the latest Independent Revenues & Benefits Monday Discussion Group, musing that his wife had suggested mowing the grass in the drizzle — a comment…
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