Working tax credit changes hit 200,000 households
This article tells us:
More than 200,000 low-income families have lost working tax credit payments of up to £73 a week, Treasury figures confirm.
Changes introduced on 6 April required claimant households to work at least 24 hours a week to qualify for tax credits, up from 16 hours a week. Government snapshot estimates showed 212,000 couples would be affected, but ministers argued that “a large proportion” would be able to persuade their employers to increase their hours.
Official figures released in response to a parliamentary question on Tuesday show that on 1 April, 203,000 households were still working between 16 and 24 hours a week, suggesting 5% of those affected were able to get extra hours while almost all the remainder lost out.
I have been thinking about a study of the challenges facing working class people (for want of a more up to date term) living in rural England. Rural England’s share of people like the group of 200,000 families referenced above. I think other groups, the elderly, the young etc have been the subject of much study already. Migrants to rural settlements like me have also been the subject of much debate. People on low working incomes, who have lived in rural communities for many years, I suspect, are an increasingly threatened and un-thought about minority.
Many of the “solutions” to rural “problems”- transition towns, community shops, community supported agriculture schemes, rural live/work developments etc, have a very strong affluent rural dweller undertow – not all I immediately acknowledge for fear of reader reprisals! But for all the celebration of these sort of initiatives as the solution to a heap of rural problems I wonder how many offer balm to the low income families of rural England.