Debbie Pippard reflects on the lessons learnt from The Foundry initiative

What did we learn from our experience developing The Foundry  –  a new human rights and social justice centre which has  opened recently in London?

One of the first things the founding organisations – Trust for London, the Ethical Property Company, the Barrow Cadbury Trust and LlankellyChase Foundation did was to establish a ‘special purpose vehicle’ in 2011 to develop and run The Foundry.  Then we raised more than £11m in finance; bought, refurbished and extended a building, secured tenants, and created a centre that will provide a focus for social justice and human rights activity.

The Foundry will provide work and meeting space to organisations working on human rights and social justice issues. Set up as a social investment initiative, it is funded through a combination of equity investment and loans from independent trusts, the Ethical Property Company, banks and financial institutions.  We also intend it to be an asset to the local community and those from further afield, who will be able to use the cafe, visit exhibitions and events, and take part in a programme of learning activities.

So looking back over the development period, what made it all come together, and what lessons have we learned?

PARTNERSHIP AND SHARED VISION
Undoubtedly it helped that the founder organisations knew each other well, had worked closely together, and were experienced and trusted partners.  This made it easier to create a shared vision, and has helped us through some tough moments.

This shared vision was established right from the start and has  guided our thinking on all aspects of the project; from the building design, to the planning, and to the associated education activities that will take place in the centre, to the detail of our performance framework.

THE RIGHT  PROPOSITION
And in a difficult economic climate, we were helped by having an investable proposition – a property-based development in the capital city, led by organisations with extensive experience in property investment, management and mission-related investment. These factors, combined with the clear social mission of The Foundry, enabled us to confidently approach other investors.

The lead partner in the management of the project, the Ethical Property Company, has over 15 years experience of developing and running shared office spaces with a social mission. Our advisors, particularly the architects, shared our enthusiasm for the project, and were chosen both for their architectural vision and for the added value that their experience of building and managing shared space brought to the project.

FUNDRAISING AND MISSION DELIVERY

Undoubtedly the fundraising element of the project was our biggest challenge. We started the project as the global financial crisis was unfolding – and had to decide early on whether or not to press ahead.  But Trusts and Foundations have the benefit of the long view, and we were confident that in time the market would pick up and we would be able to provide a return on investment.

Initially we hoped to raise most of the investment through equity. However, in an uncertain climate most investors preferred the security of a loan rather than the higher risk equity investment.  So we ended up with a more complex combination of loans and equity than we really wanted.  Because raising the funds was more complex than we thought it would be, we had to renegotiate ‘heads of terms’ with our primary  lenders at a late stage – a difficult process for all sides.  One lender withdrew, but others stepped in to fill the gap and allow the building work to get under way.  The complexity of the financial arrangements and the need to meet the differing due diligence requirements of different primary lenders was costly both in time and money;  it would be good  to see more convergence so that less precious social investment funding is spent on legal fees and more is available for delivery of the mission.

BEING BOLD

And we had to be bold. Finding a suitable building was challenging.  Our initial preference was for an area in East London, but prices were rising rapidly and were a little out of our reach. We widened our search and found a building while we were still some way off our funding target.  A decision had to be made whether to buy, and risk not being able to raise development funds, or continue fundraising and risk losing out in a price bubble.  At the same time we had to assess the risks of not being able to find enough tenants to fill the building. Fortunately market research indicated that there would be sufficient demand for space, and, as it turned  out, by the  time we opened, almost all space had been filled.

LESSONS

So what could we pass on from our experience to anyone thinking of embarking on a similar project?

• Make sure you have a strong partnership, with a shared vision and values and effective leadership from the Board

• Choose your delivery partners carefully. Ensure they share the vision and understand what the project is trying to achieve

• Carry out market research at an early stage to ensure the proposition is viable and will provide both sufficient financial return on investment and a clear social mission

• Ensure you understand the ‘risk appetite’ and return requirements of investors

• Develop a good performance framework to enable reporting on the extent to which the project delivers its social mission.

• Have flexibility in putting together the funding package, but be prepared to turn down offers if the required returns are too high

• Maintain your vision throughout the development stages

• Be prepared to take measured risks

• Celebrate your successes as you go along.

This blog was originally published by The Alliance magazine:  www.alliancemagazine.org.

Debbie Pippard chaired The Foundry project and is Head of Programmes at Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Hands up who understands what is meant by the expression ‘social value’? If you work in the third sector and social enterprise sector you’ll either be grappling with how to implement and monitor it or sticking your head in the sand and hoping it will go away. But for the time being it is here to stay and we have to make the most of it.

For the past two years Birmingham & Solihull Social Economy Consortium (BSSEC) has been delivering a Barrow Cadbury Trust-funded project aimed at identifying meaningful ways of implementing the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. The Act, for those of you not familiar with it, requires “public authorities to have regard to economic, social and environmental well-being in connection with public services contracts; and for connected purposes”.

BSSEC has worked jointly with Birmingham City Council and other public service commissioners to support the implementation of social value, providing briefings, resources and free workshops for social enterprises and trading voluntary organisations to help improve their ability to compete within the terms of this new legislation.

LOCAL AUTHORITY PROGRESS

Many local authorities have made good progress in putting in place practical arrangements to embed social value-based approaches in their commissioning and procurement procedures.

But they are not implementing social value as a stand-alone policy. Rather, it is being utilised as part of a wider response to the current pressures under which local authorities are operating – government spending cuts, decommissioning services, making efficiency savings, reducing the demand on services, and becoming primarily service commissioners rather than service providers. Efforts are also being made to align social value with existing corporate priorities, processes and key policy drivers and the following have become central to shaping social value priorities amongst councils:

• Targetted employment, apprenticeships and training opportunities.
• Strengthening local economies and ‘making the local pound work harder’.
• Avoiding ‘exporting jobs’ as a consequence of buying outside of authorities’ catchment areas.

Local authorities making the most progress on social value are taking bold approaches that go beyond the minimum requirements of the Act. Rather than applying social value only to service contracts above the EU procurement thresholds, which is all the Act requires, they are applying the legislation as widely as possible, to both services and goods, to all contract values, and to all providers.

Evidencing and measuring social value remain the least developed parts of the process and most authorities (and social enterprises, for that matter) are adopting a ‘wait and see’ position on measuring social value. There are a number of reasons for this:

• It is still very early days and few contracts have progressed to the point at which evidencing requirements can be reviewed or checked for effectiveness.
• Providers and purchasers lack not just standardised methods for measuring and reporting social value, but also a shared language for articulating social value.
• There is still some doubt regarding not the just the type of evidence commissioners want, but also what they wish to measure and report.

Reduced staff capacity within local authorities also means that too little is being done to assess whether transferable evidencing and monitoring methods might already exist in other parts of their organisations.

KEY ISSUES FOR SOCIAL ENTERPRISES

Many social enterprises don’t know where to start in adopting a social value measurement method. They don’t know what information to collect, what to measure, what information commissioners will find most meaningful, what method is most suited to their size and type of organisation, or what the costs of implementation might be. The bewildering array of courses, methods, tools, consultancy offers and proprietary systems purporting to measure social impact and social value make it virtually impossible to make a decision. Two recently launched websites alone – Inspiring Impact , which is backed by the Cabinet Office, and the Social Value Hub , which is an initiative of Social Enterprise UK – contain hundreds of outcome measures, impact tools and reports.

Fortunately for us, the Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise and Governance (CCEG) is currently undertaking work to assess how public authorities are implementing the Act and by Autumn 2014 there should be an ‘official’ UK social value portal which could include guidance and recommendations.

DEFINING SOCIAL VALUE

For many social enterprises the problem is not so much measuring social value but articulating and describing their social value. Many social enterprises struggle to describe what they do and the social benefit they deliver. They lack a defined, agreed corporate statement regarding their social value that is understood and used by all staff at all levels throughout the organisation. Achieving this is not the icing on the cake, but it is a good starting point and would help many to begin the process of identifying a suitable social value framework – including appropriate social value indicators and evidence – specifically for that organisation.

Our experience suggests that those enterprises fewer than around 25 staff are struggling because they don’t have enough staff to dedicate sufficient time and effort to social value and impact measurement.

There is a risk that a disproportionate burden of data-gathering and evidence will fall predominantly on the shoulders of suppliers. This would severely disadvantage smaller social enterprise and third sector providers (and smaller SMEs too). The Third Sector Research Centre recently published a report voicing precisely this concern.

PARTNERSHIP WORKING

Whatever regimes for measuring and reporting social value local authorities adopt must be proportionate and ‘do-able’ and should ideally be a joint effort between public service commissioners and the sector. Anything over-complicated or disproportionate is likely to erode rather than create social value. This makes continuing work to support social enterprises and trading third sector organisations in their social value practices of even greater importance.

Social enterprises and third sector organisations in Birmingham should take this early opportunity to sign up to the Birmingham Business Charter for Social Responsibility. The Charter is still in its infancy and early adopters are likely to be  able to influence both it and the subsequent monitoring that will be required from businesses reporting against their Charter action plans. While the Charter is not solely concerned with social value, it has become Birmingham’s main tool for a social value focus and guidance. Social enterprises should get cracking and start signing up to the Charter – they shouldn’t leave it to the private sector to lead on the Charter, as is the case at the moment.

Work, for single parents, isn’t easy at the best of times. As both the main carer and main earner supporting their family, it can be tough to find a job that allows single parents to juggle childcare as well as pay the bills. But new research from Gingerbread shows that single parents are now also battling low pay, insufficient hours and job insecurity in today’s job market. The end result is that work is failing to provide the majority of working single parent families with the income they need.

No pay, no gain

Our latest report, The long road to recovery, reveals the gulf between a recovering economy and the real-life experiences of working single parents. Around two in five working single parents surveyed are low-paid.  A quarter had experienced a wage cut in the last six months alone.  And 30 per cent had experienced unpaid overtime in the last two years, for the first time.

“I am earning less per hour than I was four years ago”

Pay aside, many single parents simply can’t find the working hours they want and need – the proportion of single parents working part-time when they want full-time hours has doubled since 2007. Over half of non-working single parents surveyed said inflexible hours stopped them from applying for jobs all or most of the time.

And now single parents must deal with the job insecurity that has emerged since the recession. Around a quarter of non-working single parents said they’d left their last job due to hours or wage cuts, a temporary job ending or redundancy. And once out of work, the support provided is often focused on job search targets, rather than meaningful support to help single parents back into sustainable employment.

“I found myself just applying for jobs…that I’d already been rejected for, just to meet the quota they had set me”

Single parents are doing all they can to keep their heads above water, with many working multiple jobs and long hours to cover their bills. But, in the face of a long-term fall in wages, rising living costs and recent welfare cuts, it can feel like a losing battle. And no wonder, when single parents now need to earn more than twice as much as they did in 2008 to meet a basic standard of living.

A call for action

It’s clear that work is no golden ticket out of poverty. We cannot dismiss the problem of low-paid and insecure jobs as a rite of passage, just the first step on a long-term career path. As the Resolution Foundation found, people are too often trapped in jobs that offer little pay and no progression.   Single parents have been disproportionately hit by welfare cuts and there may be more on the horizon. As the safety net is pulled away, we need action now to ensure single parents can support their families.   Gingerbread wants to see the government improve support for single parents getting back to work, moving away from the ‘work-first’ approach that pushes single parents to take any job. We need stronger in-work financial support to soften financial barriers to work. And the government must work with employers to promote flexible working and tackle low pay and job insecurity.   The government wants to ensure the economy grows and to reduce welfare spending – when getting just 5 per cent more single parents into the workforce could save over £400m, why not make them part of the solution rather than risk isolating them further?

“I work 24-hour shifts and longer very often…I’m missing all the little important parts of my little girl growing up and it breaks my heart!  All this and I still fail to make ends meet…my cupboards are bare”

Sumi Rabindrakumar is Gingerbread’s Research Officer. Paying the Price is a research project being carried out by Gingerbread, with funding from Barrow Cadbury Trust and Trust for London.  The Long Road to Recovery is the second report from the project; you can read the report at www.gingerbread.org.uk/payingtheprice.

Barrow Cadbury Trust’s Chief Executive, Sara Llewellin, spoke at a recent event organised by New Philanthropy Capital on campaigning for social change: the role of trustees.  In this blog she talks about what campaigning means for Barrow Cadbury Trust trustees, as well as its continuing relevance for the sector.

Why do charities campaign on social issues? From where do they get their mandate and what are the related governance responsibilities of their trustees? 

The past year has seen a concerted effort by politicians (not all of them and not all of one hue either) to cast doubt on the legitimacy of charity campaigning. While it’s not for everyone, and must rightly not be conducted along party political lines, it is a democratic entitlement with a long and noble tradition. 

It is one of civil society’s fundamental functions to hold government to account. To do this responsibly requires us to generate and facilitate collective debate on ethical matters, as “honest brokers” seeking the well-being of our charitable beneficiaries.

Charity trustees are the guardians of their charitable missions. They are honour-bound to use resources in the most impactful way possible to advance that mission. For some, this means providing emergency services for those in crisis; for others, intervening earlier to prevent future problems. For some of us, it means addressing structural issues and creating a conduit for the voices of marginalised people to be heard in the corridors of power. 

For many charities, it makes no sense at all to continually ameliorate symptoms without looking for, and voicing, potential solutions. The suggestion that this is partisan political activity shows a misunderstanding of the role of civil society over time. Our sector has provided this “critical eye” for over a century and in the context of successive administrations of varying political colours. 

Boards at the Barrow Cadbury Trust have been supporting work which seeks to improve society at the structural level for nearly a century; it’s nothing new. Our founders, together with others, set up the first juvenile court in the world in Birmingham and then lobbied government until such provision was made mandatory in the Children’s Act of 1908.

Our current board, still one mainly of direct descendants, sets clear strategic aims for each of our programmes of work and sees its role as that of “impact scrutineer”. They ask what is the change we want to see in the world, how will it be achieved and who is best placed to help bring it about? We build alliances for social change and use all our resources (money, clout, brand, intellectual capital, premises, endowment) to strengthen the hands of the change makers. 

Our mandate comes from being independent and non-partisan—which doesn’t mean neutral, but being on the side of a better, fairer society. We are part of civil society, not just a supporter of it. We genuinely believe no one tribe, faith or party has a monopoly of good ideas; hence we work to build broad alliances around the advancement of the common good. My trustees think to do less would be a dereliction of their duty.

Charity campaigning is under greater scrutiny than ever, and so I was delighted to speak at NPC’s event, aimed at and attended mainly by charity trustees, on Monday 14 July — Campaigning for social change: the role of trustees — to discuss its continuing relevance and best practice.  Discussion at the event centred on the reasons for or against campaigning, the legal environment and good campaigning practice.

A slightly shorter version of this blog was published on the NPC website.

Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) will be co-sponsoring a briefing session in the House of Lords this Wednesday, 16 July, from 5-7 pm.  The session is being chaired by Baroness Young of Hornsey, with speakers including Diana Johnson MP, Kathryn Cronin (Garden Court Chambers), Klara Skrivankova (Anti-Slavery International) and Caroline Robinson (FLEX). 

In this blog Caroline Robinson, co-director and founder of Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) makes the case for a more effective response to human trafficking for labour exploitation.

As the public’s response to recent strike action on the part of public sector workers shows, it is not always easy to convince people of the need to protect the rights of all workers, British or migrant.  It is particularly hard in the face of high unemployment and a struggling economy, when the argument is put that migrant workers are filling roles British workers could take.

Yet, when it comes to debates about modern slavery, there is widespread sympathy and support for the victims, the majority of whom are migrant workers exploited for their labour. This paradox arises, simply put, because victims are viewed as deserving protections whereas potential victims are not. Our job is to make the argument that protections are most useful before someone becomes a victim and therefore should be applied to all workers regardless of migrant status.

In debate on this question, people often suggest that greater labour protections would act as a pull factor towards the UK. Yet, the recent Migration Advisory Committee report on low skilled migration suggests that in fact the opposite is true – that the absence of labour protections creates the demand for migrant workers, ergo labour protections reduce that demand.

But it is not just public opinion that is contradictory: migrant workers also face a confusing policy landscape. On the one hand there are increasing checks on immigration status at work and home provided for in the new Immigration Act and reduced labour protections as a result of the Government’s ‘red tape challenge’; then on the other hand there is Theresa May’s high-profile campaign against  ‘modern day slavery’.

Only last month the UK government, in adopting a new Protocol to the international Forced Labour Convention, recognised that greater labour protections serve to prevent acts of modern slavery from taking place. This supports the case made by Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) in our working paper on Preventing Trafficking for Labour Exploitation, that the UK needs a much stronger labour inspection system to prevent people from being exploited for their labour. We know that where gaps in the enforcement of labour protections exist, unscrupulous employers will take advantage of such gaps and exploitation will snowball from minor infringements of employment law to severe exploitation that constitutes modern slavery.

The Modern Slavery Bill offers an opportunity to improve labour protections for vulnerable workers as a means of preventing acts of severe exploitation. The debate around the Bill should focus on why, in modern Britain, workers are still being exploited for their labour in the restaurants we visit, hotels we stay in and on the construction sites all around us.

Yet, so far the Home Secretary has resisted calls for an expanded Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) in this Bill that could serve as an effective labour inspectorate, particularly in high-risk sectors where exploitation is rife. Instead the GLA has been moved into the Home Office, placing in great jeopardy its role to protect all workers regardless of status.

As politicians of all parties declare their support for ending slavery in the UK, there is a unique opportunity to put in place measures that would ensure no worker ends up in exploitation. But this opportunity will be missed if our leaders continue to talk tough on modern slavery without recognising that labour protections for all workers is the first line of defence in this fight.

Caroline Robinson is co-Director and founder of Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX). FLEX promotes effective responses to human trafficking for labour exploitation that prioritise the needs and voice of the victims and their human rights. Caroline is also a founder and Editorial Board Member of the Anti-Trafficking Review, an international open access journal that offers an outlet for dialogue between academics, practitioners, trafficked persons and advocates on anti-trafficking issues.

In February 2014, in response to ongoing pressure from INQUEST and other pressure groups, the Government announced it would hold an independent review into the deaths in prison of young people aged 18-24. This was a significant milestone for INQUEST, who first called for an inquiry into the deaths of children in November 2003, following the prison death of 16 year old Joseph Scholes.

Inquest’s and Prison Reform Trust’s report ‘Fatally Flawed: Has the state learned lessons from the deaths of children and young people in prison?’   found that a large number of young people who had died in custody had been diagnosed with ADHD, had special educational needs, personality, conduct and attachment disorders, as well as other vulnerabilities – some of which have been linked to self-harm and suicide. Staff training was frequently inadequate and they were ill-equipped to deal with these vulnerabilities.

The most crucial recommendation in the report was that the Government should hold an independent review into the deaths of children and young people aged 24 and under in prison, examining not just criminal justice issues but social and public health issues around the journey into custody. The current mechanisms in place to examine these deaths – the investigation and inquest systems – do not have the remit to tackle these crucial, broader, contextual questions.

The Government at first resisted this call, arguing that current systems were adequate.  However, in March 2013 the parliamentary Justice Committee endorsed INQUEST’s concerns. The combination of parliamentary lobbying and legal challenge resulted in the government reconsidering its decision and in February 2014 the review was announced, with a deadline of midnight 18 July for submissions.

INQUEST was disappointed that children were excluded from the review and we will be ensuring their experiences are reflected in the analysis as much as possible.  We are putting in a detailed submission based on our in depth casework and work with bereaved families as well as our policy and research work funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust. We are asking everyone who works with young people in conflict with the law to do so too.  All contributions from organisations working with young people in and out of custody, can have an impact.

The shocking death toll of children and young people (140 self-inflicted deaths in the last ten years) means we need some fundamental rethinking to prevent the deaths of children and young people in prison but also to divert them out of the prison system altogether.

Find out more and submit your evidence before midnight 18 July.

The disproportionate numbers of Black, Asian and Minority ethnic prisoners in our criminal justice system, and the disproportionately worse outcomes they face, have been the subject of numerous reports and reviews over decades.

Despite this, over the last nine months I have attended meetings with a range of organisations and statutory agencies who all agree that this issue remains a serious and significant challenge for our Criminal Justice System, which so far we have failed to adequately address.

These meetings have taken place as part of the independent Young Review into improving outcomes for young black and Muslim men in the criminal justice system, led by Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey, with the support of the Black Training and Enterprise Group and Clinks. It has brought together a Task Group of representatives from the voluntary, statutory, private and academic sectors to explore how we can embed sustainable and practical solutions that address the disparities faced by this group.

Working with the support of Justice Secretary Chis Grayling and the Ministry of Justice, the Young Review has chosen to specifically focus on black and/or Muslim men aged between 18 and 24^[i] because the evidence demonstrates there are critically high proportions of this group at all stages of the Criminal Justice System and reporting the least positive outcomes and perceptions of prison life compared to all other groups.

It is worth noting that disparities in the criminal justice system for this group are part of a complex mix of educational, employment, health and social disadvantage that have characterised many of their lives.  This serves as a warning against making over-simplified assumptions about the connections between race, ethnicity and criminal justice outcomes, and points to the need for a multi-agency, multi-partner approach. However when it comes to race, across all social policy areas, and all sectors, it seems impossible to deny that there has in the past been a lack of will and/or leadership within society to effect real change.

Therefore the Young Review hopes to go some way towards placing these issues back on the agenda to ensure that in the newly configured criminal justice environment action takes place in response to them.

Our aim is not to undertake new research to find new solutions to these issues but to consider how the vast amount of existing knowledge and data on this subject can be applied in the significantly reformed commissioning and service delivery environment introduced by the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms. Our interim report, published in January, highlights 5 guiding principles for commissioners and providers:

• Ethnicity, faith and culture has a key role in promoting sustained desistance from crime:
• Leadership from government and statutory agencies is essential to ensure a proactive approach to diversity, inclusion and cultural competence and in the delivery of criminal justice services
• The experience, understanding and knowledge that resides in communities is crucial in supporting offenders to desist in prison and ‘through the gate’.
• Commissioning frameworks must identify and address specific needs associated with young black and/or Muslim men.
• Systematic and meaningful consultation with service users that provides evidence of the reasons for and solutions to the disproportionate numbers of young black and/or Muslim males in the CJS.Despite the insight, robust research and clear and valid recommendations of previous reviews, improving the outcomes faced in the criminal justice system by young black and Muslim men is an ambitious task. Our final report on how we might finally do so will be published in Autumn; in the meantime, you can find out more and read the interim report at www.youngreview.org.uk.

[i] In this report, we use the term ‘young black and/or Muslim’ to refer to men aged 18-24 who identify as black British; black African; black Caribbean; Muslim or mixed heritage/origin where it includes one or more of above.

For the first time in almost six years, Immigration has topped the list of issues people see as the most important facing Britain today, beating the economy into second place.

It comes just a day after the Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee, Bernard Jenkin, reiterated the body’s view that the figures we have on immigration are:

“blunt instruments for measuring, managing and understanding migration to and from the UK, and they are not fit for purpose”

In spite of this, those same figures have previously been described by the UK Statistics Authority as the “best available measure” of net migration “given the existing statistical sources”.

That’s why there were calls from MPs yesterday for new sources to be used – including passenger travel data from the upcoming Border Systems Programme (formerly ‘eBorders’).

We’ve outlined the issues surrounding how reliable our migration figures are in our spotlight, published today.

Full Fact is an independent fact checking organization which  provides free tools, information and advice so that anyone can check the claims we hear from politicians and the media.  020 3397 5140.  [email protected]

Life costs more if you are disabled. From buying specialist equipment to facing higher everyday expenses, disabled people face extra costs in almost all areas of life.

Last week, the Public Accounts Committee reported that the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP), introduced from April 2013 to replace Disability Living Allowance, is facing major problems. As a result many disabled people are experiencing unacceptable delays in receiving these crucial extra costs payments.

From having to buy assistive technology, spending more on heating, buying more expensive transport, to paying more for insurance – disabled people will face around £550 in disability related expenditure. PIP is intended to help cover the extra costs that disabled people face.

Delays in access to the fundamental support provided by government to offset these costs puts disabled people more at risk of financial difficulty. This is especially worrying since disabled people are three times more likely than non disabled people to turn to doorstep loans.

Protecting extra costs payments

In Priced Out, Scope calls for crucial extra costs payments to be protected by a triple lock guarantee, and from the overall cap on social security spending. We set out principles for an improved PIP assessment that ensures that disabled people who need support get it when it is needed.

When we talk about living standards in the UK we often think of growth, wages and prices. The most recent Labour Market Statistics showed that the cost-of-living crisis may be easing – average prices did not exceed average wages for the first time since 2010. But this will not be the case for disabled people who face lower incomes, higher costs and diminishing or severely delayed support.  The issue of extra costs is one that predates the recession for disabled people, and without the right support to offset these costs, a recovering economy will not improve disabled people’s living standards.

But as well as making sure the support is there, where extra costs can be driven down, they should be. Some things can be very expensive for disabled people, and we want to find out why.

Commission on Extra Costs

Huge progress has been made in opening up opportunities for disabled people over recent years. Advances in technology have brought big improvements in independence and participation but all too often these come at a high, sometimes prohibitively high, cost. The inaccessibility of infrastructure and gaps in public service provision can also cause considerable extra costs for disabled people.

Political parties and the commercial sector have begun to recognise disabled people’s collective spending power but Scope, BT and the RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Inclusive Design  found that there are still gaps in the market between mainstream and disability-specific technology which – if tapped – have real potential to drive down disabled people’s costs and raise living standards.

This year, Scope, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, will be launching a major Commission into the Extra Costs faced by disabled people. Over the course of a year, an independent panel of experts will consider the ways in which the extra costs faced by disabled people and families with disabled children in England and Wales can be driven down by both business and government.

We will be asking disabled people for their experiences of extra costs, and looking for organisations and individuals to submit formal evidence to the Commission. We also want to work with experts and practitioners across all sectors to find innovative solutions that drive down extra costs.

If you would like to get involved in the Commission or want to know more about it, please get in touch with Scope by emailing [email protected].

Ellie Brawn is a Scope’s Public Policy Adviser leading on issues of poverty, welfare and financial inclusion.

Have you ever tried to survive for a week without something you think is essential to life? Chocolate for lent, booze after Christmas, cakes before your summer holiday?  What if you had to live without access to basic financial tools for a week?  Without access to a transactional bank account, so that you could only pay bills in cash and in person?  Without any form of savings so that the simplest set back meant a trip to high cost credit providers? Without insurance so that something lost is lost for good not lost until a replacement arrives?

Access to basic banking facilities is an essential part of modern life, as employers and government agencies move away from cash and cheques towards electronic payments.  Small and micro businesses are also affected by difficulties in accessing basic affordable financial tools, often relying on easy access to bank branches to bank cash safely.

Effective tools for savings, payments, and accessing credit and insurance can help people to climb out of poverty or get through a crisis or emergency without falling into debt.  They can help businesses survive and grow and not slide into bankruptcy should a crisis occur.

The UK has made real progress in ensuring that most adults have, at least, some form of bank account. It is estimated that only 3% do not.  This is broadly in line with European neighbours such as Germany, France and Slovenia.  It also compares well with others such as Poland (30% without access to a bank account) and Italy (29%).  Still the 3% in the UK, some three million individuals, are effectively financially excluded by a lack of access.   And access to other types of financial tools remains patchy.  59% of UK households have savings of less than £5,000 and 56% of the poorest households do not have home content insurance. The reliance by many on pay day loans to get them to the end of every month is well documented.

A recent experiment in America organised by the Chicago based Center for Financial Services Innovation gave a group of white collar workers tasks to perform without using mainstream financial services.  These included buying a pre-paid card and cashing a cheque. Needless to say it wasn’t a happy experience.  The cost of transactions, the time spent in queues and the lack of security of personal data took participants by surprise.

This is why the Community Investment Coalition (CIC) is calling for a radical new approach to financial inclusion.  We believe that every adult, household and business should have access to a basic package of fair and affordable financial tools to help them participate in economic life.  These tools are: a basic transactional bank account; a savings scheme; access to affordable credit; physical access to branch banking facilities; insurance; and independent money management advice. We have launched a Community Banking Charter calling for the provision of these basic financial tools and setting out the steps required to achieve these.

Achieving this radical change does not require radical measures.  Political leadership, capital investment, better local partnership working and asking the main retail banks to step up to the plate are some of the steps needed.

The experience of the American white collar workers is shared by ordinary people every day in the UK.  CIC partner Local Trust commissioned a video detailing how a lack of access to basic financial services impacts on everyday life.

The UK’s emergence from recession will not result in a rush by the financial services sector to move into new markets in poorer communities.  Many people will benefit from economic growth.  But those without access to key financial tools are likely to get left even further behind.  We need radical change.  And it needs to happen now.

Jennifer Tankard leads the Community Investment Coalition (CIC) and is Director of Advocacy and Research at CDF.