Recurring digital payments have quietly become a fixed feature of household finances across the UK, Europe and the United States. For revenues and benefits services, understanding their scale, their cross-national consistency — and their ambiguous status as essential or discretionary spending — is becoming increasingly relevant. Revenues & Benefits Intelligence · Briefing Note The Scale…
Category: Housing Market
When Systems Collide: Supported Housing, Reorganisation and Poverty in Local Government
The 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 a persistent sense that national systems are still passing risk, cost and confusion down to councils, while expecting local services to…
Briefing note: fiscal and economic context and what it means for local tax, welfare support and local government finance (March 2026)
Purpose To set out a single, joined up view of the national economic and fiscal outlook, and the practical implications for council tax, council tax reduction (CTR), local welfare support (including DHP and crisis type schemes), benefits and social security, business rates, housing, local government finance, and local government reorganisation (LGR). This note draws on…
Mid-Break Highlights from the Independent Revenues & Benefits Discussion Group
1 September 2025 We’re on our summer pause, so instead of a live session this week we’ve shared the second mid-break slide pack. It’s a chance to catch up on what’s happening across revenues and benefits while we recharge. We’ll be back together on Monday 8 September. So, what’s inside this week’s pack? Plenty to…
Local Government’s Breaking Point: Financial Fragility, Workforce Decline, and the Failure to Focus on Outcomes
Summary of the Independent Revenues & Benefits Discussion Group – 14 July 2025 At the most recent Independent Revenues & Benefits (R&B) Discussion Group, chaired by Malcolm Gardner, local government professionals gave a sobering assessment of the sector’s current state. With escalating financial deficits, an ageing and shrinking workforce, and new pressures from political reforms,…
Monday Discussion Group 8/1/24 — Money, money, money
We returned this week with a great discussion where we looked at the recent Resolution Foundation briefing note for the Health Foundation that looks at pressures on family pay, prices, and properties and the corresponding burdens on it brings to local authority budgets. There is a cyclic pressure of more hard-pressed families turning to equally…
Jan 1 2024 Revenues and Benefits Update Pack
Happy New Year. I wanted to drop you a quick message during our holiday break. I’ve prepared a pack with the latest updates on revenues and benefits, covering what’s been happening with council finances and recent developments from the last couple of weeks. There’s some positive news about the funding settlement, although it still doesn’t…
The UK Inflation Landscape: A Fragile Equilibrium and Looming Energy Bill Concerns
The UK’s inflation scenario presents a complex picture of stability amidst volatility, marked by continued price rises at a consistent rate and significant contributions from persistent high petrol and diesel costs. Notably, for the first time since September 2021, food and non-alcoholic drink prices have shown a decrease, including specific declines in the prices of…
Storms Exacerbate the UK Housing Crisis
The United Kingdom’s housing crisis, characterized by a shortage of affordable homes, skyrocketing prices, and rising homelessness, faces an additional relentless challenge: the increasing severity and frequency of storms. As the climate crisis escalates, the impact of adverse weather events on the already strained housing sector is becoming more acute, further complicating the lives of…
Monday Discussion Group 30/10/23: Jobs and Rental markets: The Ignored Crisis Part One
This week, our Monday Revenues and Benefits Discussion Group had an important discussion about two connected issues. First, we talked about the job market. Paul Howarth shared insights about changes in how the Office of National Statistics (ONS) collects and reports on job market data and what it means for us. The key point to…