The next Cabinet papers for Brent Council have a report on Brent's local welfare assistance scheme. As I have explained before, this is being threatened by further government cutbacks. The recommendations involve a number of changes.
Some of these are prompted by having seen the scheme in operation for about one and a half years. When Brent was first forced to design its own scheme, the demographic information made available by the DWP was extremely limited. There is a case for saying the original scheme design was too strict, as Brent has only spent a small proportion of the budget. It also appears not to be reached certain parts of the population e.g. pensioners.
Essentially the Council is proposing a holding operation whilst it waits to see if central government will cut funding altogether, which I fear is all too likely.
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