Poverty and exclusion

Resources
London’s Poverty Profile
New Policy Institute for Trust for London, 2011
Updated website, compiled by , this reports starkly on poverty in London: rising in-work poverty, the highest unemployment levels for young Londoners for 20 years, and the contribution of housing costs to levels of poverty described as “uniquely appalling”. The website offers summaries, a full report, more detailed statistics, and case studies. 

The poverty site: UK statistics on poverty and social exclusion UK
New Policy Institute and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2010
Comprehensive website, collating reports, using official government data, built around a set of 50 indicators. The analysis covers a wide range of issues, ranging from low income, worklessness and debt, to ill-health, poor education and problems in communities. This report focuses on the 18-month recession of 2008-9. The report is complemented by a  which provides updates to graphs, more analyses and links to other relevant sites. 

Publications
Another side of London
London Community Foundation, 2010
Case studies based on interviews with ten of the Foundation’s grant recipients, providing readable and vivid insights into the work they do with some of London’s most vulnerable people, and also some of the organisational challenges they face. Interspersed are ten ideas on how donors and volunteers can get involved with LCF.

Capital of debt: an update
London Health Forum, 2010
The interaction in London of debt and health, and especially mental health. Despite better than expected economic conditions, the number of Londoners seeking debt advice is rising sharply. Slides available here.

Closing the Gap - a guide to inequality in the capital
London Voluntary Service Council (LVSC) and Trust for London, 2010
Short and powerful point of reference on some of the key facts and figures on London’s shocking levels of inequality, including case studies of voluntary organisations working on the issues. Among the findings are that 20% of Londoners earned less than the living wage, and 40% of BME Londoners live in low income households compared with 20% of white Londoners.

Credit and debt in low-income families
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2010
Summary report on types of debt, triggers for debt and how people coped, over a period from May 2008 to June 2009. Information for policymakers, credit providers and advice services, to help them reduce the numbers of over-indebted people and to support those who experience financial crisis.

Current Issues Note 34: A summary assessment of fuel poverty in London in 2009 and scenarios to 2013
GLAEconomics, 2011
The current state of fuel poverty in London. The Note contends that the current, official DECC measure for fuel poverty (using ‘full income’) underestimates the incidence of fuel poverty in London due to the inclusion of housing-related benefits as income under that measure.

A fairer London: the 2011 living wage in London
GLA Economics, 2011
The seventh annual report on the living wage which shows there are now over 3,000 employees working for companies with contracts from the GLA Group benefitting from the London Living Wage and 12 major employers are newly signed up to paying it. The broader context, however, is that one in six of the capital's workers are still paid less than the new LLW rate.

Housing and neighbourhoods monitor: fragility and recovery
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2011
The recession has had wide-ranging effects on housing market performance and socio-economic conditions within neighbourhoods. This study looks at these pressures and how they manifest themselves from national to neighbourhood level, highlighting the fragile and uneven recovery from the recession. It shows how national policies, such as fiscal incentives, have very different effects locally because of the institutional, economic and tenure structure of local housing markets.

Interim evaluation of the national illegal money lending project
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011
Findings and evidence from a review of the effectiveness of the illegal money lending national project that started in 2007. The project set out to address “the illegal money lending which is common in deprived estates and which entrenches poverty and disadvantage, hollowing out the finances of victims and deeply compromising quality of life. The law had previously not been enforced for decades and lenders were able to act with impunity.” There are many positive lessons to be learned from the project.

Invisible Islington: living in poverty in inner London
Rocket Science UK, for Cripplegate Foundation, 2009
To understand the factors that have contributed to the economic gulf between the very wealthy and the very poor residents of Islington, 29 local residents were interviewed about the effects that poverty has on their lives. Ill health, debt, isolation and lack of opportunity have entrenched the situation. Local policy-makers and those involved in tackling the inequalities were also interviewed in order to re-think the actions needed to tackle it.

Low-income neighbourhoods in Britain
Elaine Batty, Ian Cole and Stephen Green, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2011
The principles and assumptions behind coalition government policies concerned with place, poverty and welfare, and how they connect with the perceptions of residents. Covers community cohesion and division and the Big Society; 'making work pay' and reducing dependency by improving opportunities to enter the labour market; encouraging localism and developing neighbourhood planning; and achieving community regeneration through economic growth.

Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2011
Hannah Aldridge, Anushree Parekh, Tom MacInnes and Peter Kenway. Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the New Policy Institute, 2011
Annual report on the state of poverty and social exclusion in the UK, built around a set of 50 indicators and using official government data. The analysis looks at low income, worklessness and debt, ill-health, poor education and problems in communities, among other issues.

Older people, technology and community
Independent Age and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
The importance of helping older people engage with new technology to prevent isolation and loneliness, with suggestions for breaking down barriers and dispelling the myths that can surround IT by providing older people with the initial know-how to get online and to get support (three out of four over 65 year olds have never been online). Ideas include a new scheme, Learn to Help, to provide older people with one-to-one technology support and networking opportunities. 

Out of scope, out of mind: who really loses from legal aid reform
Citizens Advice Bureaux, 2012
This report tells the stories of some of the many thousands of clients who have been helped by their local CAB providing specialist legal aid advice in the last 18 months, but whose problems will not qualify for free legal help in future when, from April 2013, social welfare law will be taken out of the scope of legal aid. Legal aid advice will be withdrawn from all welfare benefit matters, debt, employment and all housing cases except those where a person’s home is at “immediate risk” or where housing disrepair poses a serious threat to health. Legal aid advice on issues involving immigration status and family breakdown will also be abolished, except where detention, domestic violence, child protection or state childcare are involved.

The riots: what are the lessons from the JRF's work in communities?
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2011
Responding to August 2011's riots across the UK, this analysis draws on learning to give a picture of life in poorer neighbourhoods, encapsulating JRF's research on social and economic conditions, community engagement, regeneration and partnership in poor neighbourhoods. 

Tackling homelessness and exclusion: understanding complex lives
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2011
The prevalence of mental health issues, traumatic childhood experiences and suicide attempts amongst people accessing low-level homelessness support services.

Treading Water
Capitalise and Toynbee Hall, 2011
Report from the London Debt Strategy Group providing a summary of the Group’s work and a guide to further practical work to be done that could ensure better support for Londoners in urgent debt and some steps to help avoid debt. The Group formed around the work that produced Up to our neck in it, which brought to public attention the rate of increase in scale and complexity of debt in London and the challenges facing debt advice agencies – not only coping with bigger demand but doing so at a time when their funding was being restructured and limited and there was a shortage of trained and experienced debt advisers in London. 

Why do neighbourhoods stay poor?
Centre for Housing and Planning Research, Cambridge University, 2010
A major two-year study of neighbourhood deprivation in Birmingham for the Barrow Cadbury Trust looks at why, despite long periods of national economic growth and major local regeneration programmes, there are still severe concentrations of poverty and deprivation in neighbourhoods across Birmingham.