What is the Community Allowance?

We want community organisations to be able to pay people to do work that strengthens their neighbourhood without it affecting any of their benefits. Download a summary of our proposals.

The Community Allowance would enable a range of unemployed people on any benefit to undertake part time work that strengthens their neighbourhood without it affecting their benefit (including housing and council tax benefit and other benefits like free school meals and prescriptions). Participants would be allowed to register on the Community Allowance for a maximum of 52 weeks at a time.

The Community Allowance would be paid flexibly to suit an individual’s availability for work and/or the sessional work that is available; but maximum earnings on top of benefits would be capped at £4,305 or the equivalent of up to 15 hours a week on the minimum wage. Participants would be paid the minimum wage or more depending on the kind of work available and their skill base.

We want to run a pilot programme in order to test the feasibility of the Community Allowance and to capture the learning so we can refine the proposal.

Read about the Community Allowance in more detail in the CREATE Report.

If your organisation wants to back the proposals to establish the Community Allowance in the UK benefits system, contact us and we will add your organisation's name to the list of supporters on this website.