Spring budget: key points explained
Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 16 February 2023
If you are wondering how to explain the key changes in the budget to your service users, here are some of the most important areas, for you and those you work with…
Cost of Living
The chancellor has confirmed the energy price guarantee of £2,500 will continue until the end of June, marking a victory for anti-poverty campaigners.
Customers on pre-payment meters will have their charges brought in line with those on direct debits.
Funding of £100 million was announced to support local charities and the voluntary sector who provide help to those struggling with the cost of living.
Childcare
Free provision of 30 hours a week will apply to households where both parents work 16 hours or over for children aged nine months and above, starting at the end of maternity or paternity leave.
The provision, worth £6,500 a year for the average family, will be delivered in stages ‘to cope with demand’:
- Eligible working parents of two-year-olds will get 15 hours per week from April 2024
- Children between nine months and two years will get 15 hours from September 2024
- All eligible under-fives will get 30 hours from September 2025
Childcare costs will now be paid upfront for families on universal credit (UC), in a major change designed to tackle a persisting deterrent for low-income households who want to seek work.
The maximum amount parents on UC can claim for childcare will increase from £646 to £951 for one child and from £1,108 to £1,630 for two children – an increase of nearly 50 per cent.
Extra funding for nurseries was also announced – rising to £288 million by next year – as the rate paid for two-year-olds goes up from £6 to £8 an hour.
Childcare providers will see an increase in the staff-to-child ratio from 1:4 to 1:5, helping cut costs for parents but prompting safety fears from campaigners like the Early Years Alliance.
The government has set a goal that all schools will provide wraparound care between 8am and 6pm by September 2026.
Children in care
Foster carers are to benefit from increased tax relief and care leavers will see a boost to their support.
The Qualifying Care Relief threshold for paying tax on foster carer payments is to rise from £10,000 to £18,140 per household from this April, delivering a tax cut worth an average £450 a year.
Funding for the Staying Close programme, which provides support to care leavers leaving care homes, will increase from £15 million to £23.1 million per year, enabling more local authorities to deliver it.
The amount carers receive for each person they care for is to go up from £200 to £375 a week for children under 11 and £250 to £450 for older children and adults.
Long-term sick and disabled
The work capability assessment, which determines eligibility for the ‘limited availability for work’ categories within ESA and UC will be abolished. It is to be replaced by the functional assessment under Personal Independence Payment (PIP) after people with disabilities complained of being constantly assessed under the old system.
There will be a new UC health element which people eligible for PIP and UC will receive.
A voluntary employment scheme called Universal Support will be brought in to help disabled people seek work by matching them with vacancies and providing training and workplace support.
Increased work coaching for those on ESA or UC will support people with health conditions into work.
Young people with SEND and disabilities will be supported by a £3 million expansion of the Department for Education’s supported internship programme, to help them transition to the workplace.
Benefits
Sanctions will be stepped up for those who fail to meet work-search requirements or fail to take up a ‘reasonable job offer’.
Work coach support and a more intensive regime will now apply to people working 18 hours or less a week, up from the previous threshold of 15 hours.
Mid-life MOTs for the over 50s on UC will roll out to 40,000 claimants a year, up from 8,000.
Returnerships – a new apprentice scheme for over 50s – will operate alongside skills boot camps and work academies.
Fuel duty
Social workers who use their car for work will see a small benefit from the announcement that the 5p price cut per litre is to be maintained and fuel duty is to be frozen.
“That saves the average driver £100 next year and around £200 since the 5p cut was introduced,” the chancellor said.