Sunday 1 August 2010

The impact of Government spending cuts

Given that Government spending cuts will potentially affect front line services, is Britain facing a new homelessness crisis?

3 comments:

  1. From looking at research recently undertaken by the National Housing Federation (which has been sourced from another Blog), the answer to this question can only be yes. It's also worrying that those areas that will be worst affected are those which already have high proportions of homelessness. The impact of the cuts will only be understood by the wider public when the increased number of rough sleepers is clearly evident on our streets. By this stage it is too late, as another generation of entrenched rough sleepers with associated social problems will have been created.

    Whilst the welfare system needs an urgent review, it should not result in people with a clearly identifiable need being forced onto the streets.

    It now emerges that a total of 936,000 people risk being driven into debt, arrears and potential homelessness by the proposed cuts. It’s worth remembering that many of them are already the most vulnerable people in society.


    According to analysis of the government’s own figures by the National Housing Federation among those who will lose an average of £624 a year under the cuts are:
    · 431,000 women
    · 308,000 low paid workers
    · 299,800 single parents
    · 205,500 unemployed people
    · 178,000 people with disabilities
    · 121,800 black and Asian people and
    · 75,000 older people.
    Similarly, according to the analysis, the places that will be among the worst hit are:
    · Birmingham – with 18,870 people losing out
    · Leeds – with 15,610 people losing out
    · Liverpool – with 12,620 people losing out
    · Manchester – with 10,210 people losing out
    · Lewisham – with 9,050 people losing out
    · Bristol – with 8,630 people losing out
    · Nottingham – with 5,840 people losing out
    · Lambeth – with 5,470 people losing out
    · Tower Hamlets – with 3,580 people losing out
    · Norwich – with 2,420 people losing out.

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  2. It would depend on what the spending cuts are for. But there is point that the government are not thinking about what affect the are having on the less fortunate people in the country. it is all well and good cutting the government spending but they need to state what they are going to do for the homeless and less fortunate people in modern society.

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  3. I think there a lot more to think about than just how the poor are going to be affected?.
    The lack of frontline services is a worry, the homeless population is going to increase quite dramatically, so the knock on effect is with the current status of we are still in a recession(even though we are aparrently not). The employment figures are still low. So we will have a lot more people with nothing to do and nowhere to go, and with the fact that our police force is being reduced by a worrying amount, this is a recipe for disaster. More poor people, higher crime rate's, lower conviction rates, over populated prisons. Higher drug user's. Don't you just love civillised society?????

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