Two-fifths of all children in Brent were living below the poverty line in the lead up to the pandemic. These new statistics, published by End Child Poverty, also reveal that this was one of the highest rates in the country during the period between April 2019 and March 2020. Local London Assembly Member, Krupesh Hirani AM, said that these “alarming figures” are “yet another wake-up call” for the Government to “fix our broken welfare system”.
End Child Poverty’s research has attributed the high cost of housing as a key driver behind these numbers, which place the capital above every other region of the UK in terms of child poverty levels. The average rate across the country during 2019/2020 was 31%.
In March 2020, the Government raised Local Housing Allowance rates to cover the bottom 30% of rents. However, Mr Hirani believes that Ministers must boost this further to encompass up to 50% of local rent levels, to prevent more families from falling into arrears to private landlords.
He is also urging the Government to make wider reforms to the welfare system, such as an increase to child benefits, the scrapping of the two child-limit and formal five-week waiting period on Universal Credit payments, and a permanent extension to the weekly £20 uplift.
Local London Assembly Member, Krupesh Hirani AM, said: “These alarming figures provide yet another wake-up call to Ministers that prove that after a decade of austerity, the state is failing to fulfil its duty of care for vulnerable people in our society. We are in real danger of child poverty becoming a new normal in our community. We need the Government to take immediate action and throw our children a lifeline by fixing the broken welfare system”.
