By Posted on Posted in Members

NAWRA members have identified many former Incapacity Benefit/Severe Disablement Allowance claimants who have been migrated to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), and only been awarded contributory ESA.  This is because the Department for Work and Pensions have failed to apply the regulations and their own guidance and undertake a financial assessment to check entitlement to any top up of Income Related ESA. In July 2017, we wrote to the secretary of state for work and pensions, David Gauke MP to …

Letter to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about income related ESA Read more »

By Posted on Posted in ESA

NAWRA has submitted a response to the Public Accounts Committee inquiry into the errors made when incapacity benefit claimants who were migrated over to contributory ESA (cESA) were not assessed for income-related ESA (irESA). A big thank you to all those who took the time to respond to the survey in the very short timescale allowed. NAWRA has also been invited to give oral evidence to the Committee on Monday 21 May.

By Posted on Posted in Campaigns, Discrimination

The Equality and Diversity Forum have launched an online handbook to help advisers, and advice services more widely, to identify and challenge potential discrimination within the benefits system. The handbook includes a range of tools and practical help to make it easier for advisers to recognise discrimination issues and to help services to build equality rights into advice delivery.  It is an essential resource for everyone working in welfare rights. Currently in beta form, the handbook can be accessed and …

Challenging discrimination in welfare benefits Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Members

NAWRA member Sarah Batty has contributed to the Social Policy Association’s 50th anniversary blog series with a piece about the workshops facilitated by Dr Michael Orton of Warwick University at NAWRA meetings in 2016 and 2017 on the topic of ‘Putting the security back into social security’. The aim was to use consensus-building to identify key short to medium-term actions to return security to the benefits system. Read the blog.