News Shorts and Other Busyness

Self-Help Schemes Undermined By DSS

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 15.

Poverty is the root cause of many problems on Britain’s run down housing estates and self-help schemes are being undermined by social security and tax rules, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation claimed in December.

Unemployed people wanting to lift their communities out of poverty and bad education do not get involved in case the Inland Revenue and Benefits Agencies start asking questions about what they do with their time, the report claims.

Amongst the measures prescribed by the report’s author, Marilyn Taylor, for a twenty year programme to help Britain’s 2,000 run-down estates are more credit unions, skills exchanges and local exchange trading schemes.