| CHASM Autumn e-Bulletin |
Welcome to the CHASM e-bulletin, bringing together all the latest news and events from the Centre over the last four months.
Let us know what you think via twitter, email or find out more about the work that we do on the CHASM website.
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e-Bulletin Round-up
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From CHASM Director Andy Lymer
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CHASM has been involved in a variety of exciting activities over the last four months since we reported to you last. These have included hosting and participating in fringe events at both the Labour and Conservative party conferences, running a series of seminars on our work, bringing others to talk to us about their work and engaging in progressing our main research streams. A key highlight for us in this period however, has been the merging into our ranks of the Housing and Communities Research Group here at the University of Birmingham who we have joined with to create a larger group under my Directorship. This is a really exciting move for us all enabling us to do more housing related work under the CHASM banner and to enable us to support this extensive network to continue to grow and flourish in the work it does.
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News
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Housing and Communities Research Group (HCRG) joins CHASM
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Housing features heavily in the work CHASM does on personal and family finances. We will be bringing together our research focus across HCRG and CHASM to develop a really exciting portfolio of projects based on our common areas of interest.
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Help to Save Scheme
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CHASM is very pleased to be supporting HMRC in their roll out of the Help to Save (HTS) Scheme that went live on the 12 September to all recipients of tax credits or Universal Credit. Andy Lymer and James Gregory will be working with their app and web media team to support their planning and development programme. They will investigate how these tools can be progressed in the near future to ensure they are as seamless and easy to use as possible for the c.5 million potential HTS customers in the UK.
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Should Social Housing Support be a Priority for this Year’s Budget?
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Ahead of Budget 2018, James Gregory and Andy Lymer demonstrated that evidence from research carried out by CHASM on behalf of social housing provider Vivid Homes suggested that good news in the Budget would need to be more than just a promised investment in more housing. It will also require a policy shift. Sadly the outcome of this event showed that social housing barely received a mention.
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What Might a Post-Wonga World Look Like?
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Even after the collapse of Wonga in August, there are still many types of high cost credit in the marketplace, warns Karen Rowlingson. Karen argues that further action is needed if we want a post-Wonga world to look significantly different from what went before.
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CHASM Director meets Eddie Hughes, MP for Walsall North
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Andy Lymer and Eddie Hughes, Conservative MP for Walsall North, had a meeting of minds at the start of November. They discussed details of the work CHASM is undertaking in the area of tax policy related to personal finance and housing, both particularly relevant for Eddie’s local constituency that he describes as the most disadvantaged of any Conservative seat currently.
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People
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Welcome Back to Dr Louise Overton
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Louise Overton, a key member of the CHASM Team, with a focus on older people and personal finance, has returned from maternity leave and is looking forward to continuing with all things CHASM!
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CHASM Intern Research Update
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CHASM Interns, Sam Palmer and Jessica Hughes have had a busy four months exploring their research areas and collecting their data, the results of which will be presented in December 2018.
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Research
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Housing and Wellbeing
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Find out more about our ongoing research in the area of Housing and Wellbeing: Watch our animated video ‘Breaking down housing stereotypes’ from the Wellbeing and Tenure Project and learn about our Social Housing and Life-Chances Project with East Devon District Council (EDDC) and Live West Housing.
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Financial Inclusion in Britain: Infographics from 2013-2017
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Karen Rowlingson and Steven McKay have put together a set of fascinating infographics from five years of British financial inclusion data, together with an update to our Annual Monitor briefing paper for 2018.
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Events
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Event Reports
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CHASM at the Labour and Conservative Party Conferences
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CHASM hosted a fringe event at the Labour Party Conference to discuss how we can win the campaign to end high cost credit. Karen Rowlingson was also on the panel at the Bright Blue fringe event ‘Can tech save savings?’ at the Conservative Party Conference.
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| 27th Annual Tax Research Network Conference Fringe event |
This CHASM fringe event on 4th September (part of the Tax Research Network event the Business School was hosting this year) provided a forum for delegates to discuss the place of social policy in the study of taxation. Speakers included Dr Micheal Collins, Assistant Professor of Social Policy at University College Dublin, Sally Ruane Reader in Social Policy at De Montfort University and Adrian Sinfield, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy, University of Edinburgh. CHASM will play host to a second of these events in February next year - more details to follow.
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| Funding Public Services: Postcode Lotteries or Local Responsibilities? |
CHASM joined forces with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and two other University of Birmingham Research Centres - City-Redi and Inlogov - to host a fascinating ESRC Festival of Social Sciences event on 7th November exploring the conundrum of increasing more local spending devolution v the variability in local services provision this might lead to between different devolved regions.
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| Housing and wellbeing: What we know so far |
Also on the 7th November in what was a busy day for CHASM, James Gregory and Andrew Lymer present their findings from over the last 18 months of a bespoke survey with over 3000 responses across the South East and South West England. Do check out the video interview on this presentation with James as the lead researcher on this project that is now on our website.
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| Can we overcome the generational divide? |
Karen Rowlingson chaired this ESRC Festival panel discussion on 8th November made up of University of Birmingham experts on financial security, attitudes towards work, technology and social media, beauty standards and perceptions of racism and poverty.
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| Upcoming events |
Hare-brained schemes and crackpot ideas – Why they are worth considering
Tuesday 11 December, 14:00-15:30 |
| This Housing and Communities Research Group (HCRG) seminar on the 11th December celebrates the launch of the Jane Slowey Bursary sponsored by the charity Commonweal Housing. Ashley Horsey, Chief Executive of Commonweal, will explore the development and testing of new ideas to address different forms of social injustice, such as limited affordable housing for those on low or insecure incomes.
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In-work poverty in the UK: Trends, tax credits and transitions
Wednesday 12 December, 13:00-14:00 |
| On the 12th December we are pleased to be hosting Dr Rod Hick of Cardiff University who will be discussing the approaches to measuring in-work poverty that exists internationally, in particular the distinction between the official EU definition of in-work poverty and the measurement tradition favoured by scholars in the UK.
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