British Government enforce New Changes that start today!
Here's same of them:
***Monday 1 April***
Bedroom tax introduced
The aim is to tackle overcrowding and encourage a more efficient use of
social housing. Working age housing benefit and unemployment claimants
deemed to have one spare bedroom in social housing will lose 14% of
their housing benefit and those with two or more spare bedrooms will
lose 25%. An estimated 1m households with extra bedrooms are paid
housing benefit. Critics say it is an inefficient policy as in the north
of England, families with a spare rooms outnumber overcrowded families
by three to one, so thousands will be hit with the tax when there is no
local need for them to move. Two-thirds of the people hit by the bedroom
tax are disabled.
Savings: £465m a year. As many as 660,000 people in social housing will lose an average of £728 a year.
***Monday 1 April***
Thousands lose access to legal aid
Branded by Labour a "day of shame" for the legal aid system, the cutoff
to claim legal aid will be a household income of £32,000, and those
earning between £14,000 and £32,000 will have to take a means test.
Family law cases including divorce, child custody, immigration and
employment cases will be badly affected.
Savings: a minimum £350m from £2.2bn legal aid bill.
***Monday 1 April***
Council tax benefit passes into local control
Council tax benefit, currently a single system administered by the
Department for Work and Pensions, is being transferred to local councils
with a reduction in funding of 10%. Council tax benefit is claimed by
5.9 million low-income families in the UK. The new onus on councils has
come at a time when local government funding, according to the Institute
for Fiscal Studies, has fallen by 26.8% in two years in real terms. A
Guardian survey of 81 councils last week found many claiming they face
difficult cuts, with almost half saying they were reducing spending on
care services for adults. This also comes at a time when 2.4m households
will see a council tax rise.
Savings: up to £480m a year, but depends on decisions of local councils.
***Monday 1 April***
NHS commissioning changes for ever
An NHS commissioning board and a total of 240 local commissioning
groups made up of doctors, nurses and other professionals will take
control of budgets to buy services for patients. They will buy from any
service providers, including private ones so long as they meet NHS
standards and costs. Strategic health authorities and primary care
trusts disappear.
Costs: £1.4bn, mainly in redundancies, followed by savings as high as £5bn in 2015 owing to fall in staff numbers.
***Monday 1 April***
Regulation of financial industry changes
The Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority,
housed in the Bank of England, replace the Financial Services Authority.
The Bank promises these changes do not represent the death and Easter
resurrection of the same body. A new, proactive supervisory approach
towards the City is promised, focused on outcomes rather than a tick-box
culture. It has powers to prosecute, throw people out of the industry
and withdraw a bank's licence. Above all it monitors risk to the
financial system as a whole.
***Saturday 6 April***
50p tax rate scrapped for high earners
Announced in the 2012 budget. George Osborne said the 50p rate,
introduced in April 2010, caused massive distortions in 2010-11 and
raised only £1bn, rather than the £2.5bn forecast by Labour back in
2009. HMRC found £16bn was deliberately shifted into the previous tax
year, largely by owner/directors of companies taking dividends in the
previous year when the highest rate was still 40p. Labour claims 13,000
millionaires will get a £100,000 tax cut.
***Monday 8 April***
Disability living allowance scrapped
The personal independence payment (PIP) replaces the disability living
allowance and, according to the DWP, is not based on your condition, but
on how your condition affects you, so narrowing the gateway to the PIP.
It will contain two elements: a daily living component and a mobility
component. If you score sufficient points, a claim can be made.
Assessments will be face-to-face rather than based on written
submissions, starting in Bootle benefits centre, handling claims across
the north-west and north-east.
***Monday 8 April***
Benefit uprating begins
For the first time in history welfare benefits and tax credits will not
rise in line with inflation and will instead for the next three years
rise by 1%. Had there been no change benefits would have risen by 2.2%.
Disability benefits will continue to rise in line with inflation.
Savings: £505m in the first year, rising to £2.3bn in 2015-16. Nearly
9.5 million families will be affected, including 7 million in work, by
£165 a year.
***Monday 15 April***
Welfare benefit cap
The most popular of the welfare reforms will begin on 15 April in the
London boroughs of Bromley, Croydon, Enfield and Haringey. The intention
is that no welfare claimants will receive in total more than the
average annual household income after tax and national insurance –
estimated at £26,000. Other councils will start to introduce it from 15
July and it will be fully up and running by the end of September. Some
estimate 80,000 households will be made homeless. The DWP says around
7,000 people who would have been affected by the cap have moved into
work and a further 22,000 have accepted employment support to move into
work. Households where someone is entitled to working tax credits will
not be affected.
Savings: £51m over three years.
***28 April***
Universal credit introduced
The new in- and out-of-work credit, which integrates six of the main
out-of-work benefits, will start to be implemented this April in one
jobcentre in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester. The aim is to
increase incentives to work for the unemployed and to encourage longer
hours for those working part-time. It had been intended that four
jobcentres would start the trial in April, but this has been delayed
until July, and a national programme will start in September for new
claimants. They will test the new sanctions regime and a new fortnightly
job search trial, which aims to ensure all jobseeker's allowance and
unemployment claimants are automatically signed onto Job Match, an
internet-based job-search mechanism. Suspicion remains that the software
is not ready.
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BR: That's some of the Changes that have taken effect Today!! ...
Remember the Poll Tax Riots in the early 1990's ;) There on the Way!!
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