2014 Report details for project: Benefit Cap
| Project name | Benefit Cap - there are 2 reports for this project: 2013, 2014 |
|---|---|
| Google search | Google search on project name (opens in new window)  |
| Contracts | Contracts search (opens in new window) - under development |
| Organisation | DWP (D10) - see all reports for this organisation |
| Report year | 2014 (data is from September 2013) |
| Category | Transformation - see all reports for this category |
| Description: | From April 2013, the Government introduced a cap on the total amount of benefit that working-age people can receive so that households on out-of-work benefits will no longer receive more in welfare payments than the average weekly wage for working households. Benefit payments for individual households are capped at £500 per week for couples (with or without children) and single parent households; and at £350 per week for single adult households without children. This is around the average earned income after tax and national insurance deductions for working households. |
| DCA (RAG) | Amber/Green |
| DCA text: | The project successfully implemented the benefit cap, with phased implementation starting from April 2013. National implementation was completed by the end of September 2013. The actions recommended to the project by the MPA were already part of the existing implementation plan and were necessarily delivered as part of successful implementation. The benefit cap has now been rolled out to all Local Authorities across the country To January 2014 over 38,600 households had been capped, with almost 11,000 no longer capped (28%). Of those households no longer capped around 40% have gone into work, as indicated by the number of open working tax credit claims. |
| Start date | 2012-04-19 |
| End date | 2013-12-19 |
| Schedule text | The project closed on 20 February 2014. While implementation had taken place successfully, a reduced project remained in place beyond the initial planning date to ensure a smooth handover into business as usual occurred. |
| Baseline | £25.41m |
| Forecast | £14.63m |
| Variance | -42.42% |
| Variance text: | The forecast shown above of £14.6m does not take into account payments made by the project to Local Authorities via grants of £12.1m to fund New Burdens. The total spend in 2013/14 is £26.7m. The increase in costs was mainly as a result of additional expenditure on local support to help people into work using the flexible support fund and extending the project team availability by 3 months |
| Whole Life Cost | £46.31m |
| WLCost text: | The whole life costs cover the DWP and Local Authority costs for implementing and delivering the cap from April 2013. The costs mainly encompass; DWP Project Team resource, upfront employment support for those claimants potentially being capped (of whom 36,000 accepted employment support and over 19,000 moved into employment), the introduction of a new Benefit Cap IT system to manage the capping of cases, additional LA costs for administering the pathfinder sites from April 2013 and ongoing DWP and LA staff resource for processing cases appropriate to be capped. |
| Notes1: | |
| Notes2: | |
| Sourcefile | IPA_2014.csv |
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Acknowledgement: GMPP data has been re-used under the Open Government Licence.