A Cabinet minister has urged middle-class savers and borrowers to cast aside their prejudices and join credit unions.
These non-profit organisations have long been regarded as the preserve of low-paid families who would otherwise struggle to obtain a mortgage or bank account.
A Credit Union in North Somerset has seen its membership double in the past 12 months – following warnings about the dangers of pay-day loans.
The Somerset Savings and Loans, which was previously North Somerset Credit Union, has seen its membership increase in the last 12 months from 1,000 members to just under 2,000.
Its nearly Christmas and shoppers are being urged not to spoil the festive fun by creating mountains of personal debt which will take months to clear.
Instead there are other ways to make the most of what you have and consumers who are canny could end the year by saving themselves a few pounds.
THE full effect of sweeping changes to the welfare system has yet to become clear.
A cross-party group of councillors has heard from senior officials from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) about the new Universal Credit, which was introduced in Rugby last Monday.
The meeting was part of the early stages of its fact-finding work as the council seeks assurances over the support to residents affected by the benefit cap, changes to local council tax support, the so-called bedroom tax and Universal Credit.
This time last week, there were confident predictions that the catastrophic development of universal credit was about to claim its biggest victim to date. Not Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state, but Robert Devereux, his permanent secretary. Devereux, whose experience of welfare reform goes back to the early days of new Labour, knows the department well, and he's also had the now-obligatory spell outside the department and outside Whitehall.
But the huge process of introducing a live system that folds six different in-work benefits into one that keeps up with a claimant's circumstances week by week has lurched from crisis to crisis. In September, the National Audit Office (again) raised serious concerns. The public accounts committee followed up with evidence sessions with the main players. Its report, it was anticipated, would lead to Devereux's swift departure.
NEARLY 200 people have signed a petition calling for the ‘bedroom tax’ to be scrapped – with protestors urging Councils to debate the issue.
Last Thursday, an organised protest group set up in Angel Place to ask passers-by if they would add their support to the campaign.
The lack of affordable housing is adding to the country's cost of living crisis with private rents in England forecast to rise another 44% by 2020.
And research carried out on behalf of the National Housing Federation shows that more and more parents are helping their children to pay their rent.
Seven months after the introduction of the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ two thirds of council house tenants affected are behind with rent, a Freedom of Information request has found.
Rent arrears have risen by £693,202 to £4,182,026 since the welfare reform’s introduction in April. It cuts housing benefit by an average £14 per week to council and housing association tenants deemed to have ‘spare’ bedrooms.
The Government's benefits cap will struggle to meet its objectives of saving taxpayers' money and encouraging people into work, a report has found.
The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) studied the results of the cap in Haringey, one of four London boroughs chosen as pilot areas for the scheme.
The UK's housing system is in crisis due to a lack of housing stock. Shelter estimates that there is a need for 250.000 new homes to be build per year and that is just for England alone. It is pretty much universally accepted that successive governments did not find building homes politically-attractive and, due to the short-sighted ineptitude, there are simply not enough homes especially in the social sector.
So how does the Tory-led government tackle the housing shortage crisis? Do they listen to housing and business experts and build more homes? No, they ignored these experts. Their solution to the housing shortage crisis is to manipulate the benefits system so that tenants on a low incomes pay for the housing crisis via cuts to Housing Benefit.