Affordability

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The Fair for You and Iceland Food Club: Impact Evaluation

The Food Club is a highly innovative partnership between Fair for You and Iceland Foods, providing small sum, interest-free credit to a demographic that has been hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis. Our evaluation indicates it has been highly successful: reducing the use of interest bearing credit for essentials, and helping people stay on top of their household bills. And it has improved diets; stopped children from going hungry, and improved both physical and mental health in many cases.

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Council Tax in the cost-of-living-crisis

With increasing numbers of council on the brink of declaring effective bankruptcy and increased Council Tax arrears, there is an urgent need to reform local government finance. In this briefing we set out our position and call for improvements in funding for councils, debt advice commissioning, and the Council Tax collection regime.

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The drivers of illegal moneylending

Over the past two years there has been increasing concern about levels of illegal lending. But estimates of its scale vary widely. This study involved secondary analysis of the FCA's Financial Lives Survey for 2020. The findings highlight that recent small-scale surveys indicating a significant rise in illegal lending are likely to be unreliable, and that over-indebtedness and previous, legal, high-cost credit use are dangerous drivers that need to be addressed.

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What does good relending look like?

The Financial Conduct Authority is in the final stages of consulting on its proposals for a new Consumer Duty, which focuses on ensuring improved outcomes for users of financial services and products. In this briefing we consider how the proposed duty could help to address long-standing problems associated with ‘relending’ in the UK’s consumer credit markets.

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Britain in the Red: Why we need action to help over-indebted households

In 2016 we were jointly commissioned by UNISON and the TUC to undertake an analysis of over-indebtedness in Britain. The report highlighted how traditional measures of the debt burden understated this because they fail to take account of rising living costs. We construct a new measure based not on gross incomes but on the level of interest payments relative to the available surplus of income over non debt related expenditure. We call for this measure to be used to guide future policy interventions.

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Taking on the Moneylenders: Lessons from Japan

In 2012 we undertook a study tour to Japan and investigated the impact of their measures to cap the cost of credit and prevent irresponsible lending. Our report highlights the positive effects of these measures, and drew out the implications for the UK.

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Mitigating the Consequences of Rising Household Debt

In October 2019, we were commissioned by The Commonwealth to review international approaches to deal with rising household debt. This led to a discussion paper which we presented to Commonwealth Central Bankers at the IMF/World Bank event in Washington DC.

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The Social Impact of Fair for You

This report provides an assessment of the social benefits that have been created by Fair for You: a Community Interest Company providing affordable credit to families with incomes in the lower half of the income distribution throughout the UK.