Tax Credits in the House of Lords today (Monday 26th)
The Lib Dem peers will be tabling a fatal motion today to stop the government’s tax credit cuts in their tracks. It is expected that Labour peers will not be supporting this although they will be tabling one calling for a review and some transitional measures which Lib Dem peers will support if their efforts to stop them entirely do not succeed.
Following up from the template press release from HQ, see attached for LA level data as well as ward level data. For the ward data, click the filter button at the top of the local authority column to find the wards in your council. There will be some variation between the totals of the wards for an LA and the LA data as they were recorded at different times. You will also notice that some LSOA codes have not been picked up by the ONS lookup spreadsheets – if you recognise an unattributed LSOA code as belonging to your ward then feel free to add the figure to your ward total.
Term-time holidays
Both the Liberal Democrats and the LGA were in the news last week calling for more discretion for headteachers to allow families to take term-time holidays in certain circumstances, without risking a fine. This follows a motion passed at our autumn conference calling for such a change. The Press Association was able to obtain figures from 98 councils on the number of fines handed out to families for unauthorised holidays (but have not released the full list).
If you want to take this issue up in your council then see if you can obtain the figures from your council. Failing that, there are figures attached showing how many half-days absence have been down to unauthorised holidays in your council – this will give an indication of how many families are being hit but obviously not as clear as having the actual council figures.
Also see attached for a council motion that has been drafted using lines from the conference motion and the LGA as well as a template press release.