Working for a charity supporting older people in poverty, I’m often taken back by the reality of financial hardship in later life. The current statistics show that, shockingly, one in six people aged over 65 in the UK are in poverty, and daily, I hear stories of some of these peoples’ experiences.

A grandmother losing almost two stone because she’s been forced to skip meals. An 85-year old’s hospitalisation due to illness caused by what he suspects was his damp, mouldy rented home. An older lady who uses her phone torch at night because she’s scared to use the lights, despite putting her at risk of further falls. This is what poverty in later life looks like today.

Affecting around two million older people, the situation of financial hardship is already bad. Now, our new research projects that it could get worse.

At Independent Age, we commissioned research from the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, a consortium of housing policy institutions, to project poverty levels and housing tenure for 2040, if current policies and trends stay the same. In a little over 15 years, we could be looking at a catastrophe.

The research that makes up our new Keys to the Future report projects that, by 2040:

• Poverty in later life will rise to affect almost one in four (23%), or 3.9 million, from 2.1 million currently.  
• Poverty will increase more for older women than older men, going from 20% currently to 26%, or affecting over a quarter of older women.
• Poverty levels among older people with a disability will increase significantly from 18% currently to almost one in three (29%). 
• Half (50%) of older private renters will be in poverty.  

The projections are staggering. They threaten to destroy the dream of the comfortable and relaxed later life that we’d all want and deserve.

Poverty in later life is a terrible situation to find yourself in. As well as forcing older people to make terrible choices like whether to heat their home or eat, it removes your dignity, with some older people telling us they’re only washing in cold water or flushing the loo once a day. The freedom of a simple pleasure like going for a cup of tea with friends or visiting the cinema is out of the question for many. One older person on a low income said that they were “not living, just surviving”.

This isn’t just a tragedy for individuals and their families and community. It weakens our society through weakening the people in it, with just one of the costs of poverty in later life being the increased health and social needs caused by having to make cuts to food and energy use.

Many of the people we speak to never thought they’d be in this situation. Affected by ill health, bereavement or relationship breakdown, the reasons people find themselves in financial hardship in later life could strike almost anyone. That’s why averting this outcome should matter to all of us.

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Today and tomorrow’s older people need:

• The next UK government to conducta cross-party review to agree what level of income is needed in retirement to avoid poverty and to then make sure older people receive this, including all social security entitlements.
• The next UK government to make sure renters on a low income are adequately supported to pay their rent through local housing allowance.
• For renters in England, the next UK government to reform the private rental sector so no one faces no fault evictions or financial discrimination and everyone has a decent home and longer notice periods.
• The Scottish government and Parliament to progress the Housing Bill to create a new system of rent controls, strengthen tenants’ rights and improve support for people facing eviction and homelessness.
• For political parties across the nations to commit to investing in more social housing.

By working together, political parties across the UK have the power to rewrite the script and prevent this terrible future from being realised. With collective action, we can make sure that everyone has a dignified and fulfilling later life to look forward to.

Joanna Elson is the chief executive of Independent Age.

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Rishi Sunak’s manifesto promise to halve migration has been slammed as “arbitrary, untenable and cruel” by experts as the Conservatives unveiled the immigration plans at the heart of their election strategy.

The prime minister has said that, if his government is re-elected, parliament will vote each year on a legally-binding cap on migration.

All asylum claims will be processed in six months and the use of hotels ended, the newly-released manifesto promised, while automatically raising the £38,700 threshold for skilled workers and family visas in line with inflation.

“Saying that ‘migration will be halved’ is arbitrary, untenable and cruel,” said Yasmin Halima, executive director at the Joint Centre for the Welfare of Immigrants.

“Instead, any future government should be focussing on how to fix the inefficiencies of an immigration system that leaves traumatised people in limbo, often for years, and that punishes those who come here to study or work. “

Also announced this week, the Lib Dems’ plans include giving asylum seekers the right to work after three months of waiting for a claim, and scrapping the Rwanda scheme.

In a speech at Silverstone racetrack, Sunak committed to the Rwanda plan as a deterrent and said migration has been too high in recent years.

Josephine Whitaker-Yilmaz, policy and public affairs manager at Praxis, said the manifesto policies carried on a trend of “intensifying anti-migrant rhetoric”. 

“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen in the Conservative Party manifesto is a doubling down on this theme, with the promise of yet another hike in already exorbitant visa fees to pay for more police,” said Whitaker-Yilmaz. 

“Not only would this do nothing to solve the root causes of underinvestment in our public services, it would also exacerbate the growing problem of poverty and homelessness in our communities, including amongst migrant households.”

Net migration to the UK reached 685,000 in 2023, accounted for by a rise in non-EU citizens coming to the UK, according to the Migration Observatory.

New research suggests 63% of Brits think politicians use refugees as a weapon to stoke the ‘culture wars’.

Sunak’s plans were dismissed by migration expert Zoe Gardner. “They are the last gasps of a government that has so spectacularly mismanaged the country as to make their nonsense manifesto almost irrelevant to the election debate at all,” said Gardner. “It’s almost impressive.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

The Tories have overseen record-high homelessness, private rents and house prices during their 14 years in charge and the 2024 Conservative manifesto doubles down on policies in areas where they have failed to tackle the housing crisis.

Rishi Sunak’s bid to see off Keir Starmer and continue as prime minister has got off to a stuttering start following a series of blunders – not least leaving D-Day commemorations early – and a row over his claim that a Labour government would see £2,000 tax rises.

Sunak’s ‘clear plan’ led with tax cuts with the Tories promising to cut 2p from employees’ national insurance payments as well as a long-trailed promise to reintroduce national service for 18 year olds.

Launching the Conservative manifesto at Silverstone race circuit on Tuesday (11 June), Sunak said: “In this party, we believe that it is morally right that those who can work do work, and that hard work is rewarded with people being able to keep more of their own money. We will ensure that we have lower welfare so we can lower taxes.”

With the Tories trailing Labour in the polls – and even looking over their shoulders at Reform UK – it looks unlikely that they will remain in power.

But here’s what Sunak had to say about the Conservatives’ plans to tackle the housing crisis:

The Tories repeated their 2019 manifesto promise to scrap no-fault evictions

It’s now more than five years since then-PM Theresa May promised the Tories would scrap no-fault evictions, which allow renters to be evicted without a landlord giving a reason.

The pledge later cropped up in the 2019 manifesto but the Renters Reform Bill that was due to axe Section 21 evictions, as they are also known, failed to make it into law.

That’s after the bill faced accusations from pro-renter groups of being “watered down to appease landlords” following a series of concessions to Conservative backbenchers. No timeframe was ever given for no-fault evictions to be scrapped with the Tories arguing that court reforms must first be completed before a ban is brought in.

The 2024 Conservative manifesto repeats the promise from 2019 with the Tories vowing to “pass a Renters Reform Bill that will deliver fairness in the rental market for landlords and renters alike”. That means first delivering court reforms and strengthening other grounds for landlords to evict private tenants guilty of anti-social behaviour, the Tories added.

That falls short of the Renters Reform Coalition’s calls for an immediate no-fault eviction ban. The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change has also called for no-fault evictions to be scrapped.

Dan Wilson Craw, deputy chief executive at Generation Rent, said: “No-fault evictions make life intolerable for private renters, fuelling homelessness and making it difficult to complain about problems in your home. It is reassuring that the Conservatives remain committed to abolishing these evictions.

“But to enjoy genuinely fairer renting, tenants need stronger protections when evicted for reasons beyond our control, and from unaffordable rent increases that force us out of our homes.”

Ben Beadle, the chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, said: “Reform of the rental market should have taken place in the last parliament. As we said then, a balance between security for tenants and policies which retain the confidence of responsible landlords is crucial if we are to deliver much-needed homes for rent.”

The Conservative manifesto also promised to introduce two-year temporary capital gains tax relief for landlords who sell to their existing tenants.

Landlords who sell up to renters would not have to pay capital gains tax but doubts remain over whether tenants could afford to buy their home.

“To really have an impact, a portion of this tax break needs to go towards a discount on the price for the tenant, otherwise few will be able to afford to buy out their landlord,” said WIlson Craw.

“But many tenants aren’t in a position to buy at all: 23,000 households faced homelessness between April and December 2023 because their landlord was selling up. Tenants should therefore have the option to nominate another buyer, such as a housing co-op or the council, who would allow them to stay. This would mean the policy not only boosted home ownership but reduced homelessness too.”

Beadle said the policy “will not reverse the damage to the rental market caused by tax hikes under recent Conservative governments”.

Ending rough sleeping returns without a deadline

The 2019 manifesto promised the Tories would end rough sleeping by this year.

That target was missed with the annual rough sleeping snapshot showing 3,898 people were homeless on the streets in a single night in autumn 2023. That’s more than double the 1,768 people counted on the streets when the Tories were voted into power in 2010.

The 2024 manifesto promises to continue plans to end rough sleeping and prevent people from ending up on the streets, citing “significant progress over the last few years”.

This time around, the Conservatives have not committed to a date. The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change called on all political parties to commit to ending rough sleeping by 2030, as Sadiq Khan has pledged to do in London.

Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter, said “Despite rents surging, evictions soaring and record homelessness, the Conservative manifesto fails to provide a secure future for the millions of people whose lives are being devastated by the housing emergency.

“It beggars belief that there is no clear plan to tackle spiralling homelessness.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

The only mention of social housing is down to ‘scapegoating’

The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change has called for all political leaders to commit to building more affordable and social housing if they are voted in as the next government.

There was no such commitment in the 2024 Conservative manifesto.

The party pledged to renew its Affordable Homes Programme that will deliver homes of all tenures and focus on regenerating and improving housing estates. The programme is set to deliver 180,000 new homes across England by the end of March 2029.

There was also a promise to build 1.6 million new homes during the parliament, tellingly 100,000 more than Labour pledged and just less than 600,000 more than they have managed to build since 2019. The Tories pledged to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s but failed to hit that mark while in power.

Sunak’s party also pledged to “protect the green belt from uncontrolled development” instead focusing building efforts on brownfield land. That’s after Sunak accused Starmer of “concreting over the countryside” in last week’s televised debate in reference to Labour’s plans to target the ’grey belt’.

Instead, the only direct mention of social housing is in reference to the ‘British homes for British workers’ plan that caused a stir in January.

The Conservative manifesto vowed to legislate for new local connection and UK connection tests for social housing in England to “ensure this valuable but limited resource is allocated fairly”.

The plans amount to ”scapegoating people for the failure to build enough”, according to Shelter chief executive Neate.

“With 1.3 million households stuck on social housing waiting lists and over a quarter of a million social homes lost in the last decade, no party can deliver a secure future until they commit to building 90,000 social homes a year with rents tied to local incomes,” said Neate.

Help to Buy gets a revival

Keir Starmer told Rishi Sunak in last week’s debate that the dream of homeownership was over for young people.

Sunak later admitted to BBC’s Nick Robinson that it “has got harder” to own a home over the last 14 years of Tory rule.

The 2024 Conservative manifesto is to permanently abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers up to £425,000 from £300,000.

A new Help to Buy scheme will also be introduced to support people on to the housing ladder.

The latest Help to Buy scheme, which allowed people to buy a home with a 5% deposit, ended in March 2023.

The demand-side measure has faced accusations that it increases house prices in the past, especially when there is a shortage of homes on the market to begin with.

“Help to Buy has been proven to do more harm to our housing system than good,” said Shelter’s Neate. “Not only does it drive up house prices and help only a small minority of people, it ultimately takes money away from building genuinely affordable housing.”

The manifesto also addressed calls for the Thatcher-era Right to Buy scheme to be scrapped.

The Tories ruled out what it called “Labour’s anti-aspiration move” to reduce Right to Buy discounts and said it would “fight any plan by local authorities to abolish the Right to Buy altogether.

The latter comes after Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said he wanted to suspend Right to Buy to protect the 10,000 social homes he plans to build in the region.

Leasehold laws are ‘half-finished and watered-down’

The Tories rushed through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act in wash-up after Sunak called the 4 July general election.

Progress has been slow on leasehold reform. At one point in the last Parliament, housing secretary Michael Gove promised to abolish leasehold altogether before later backtracking.

The 2024 manifesto is a step down from 2019 when the party promised to set ground rents to a nominal peppercorn value immediately, for example. Five years later that has been downgraded to setting the cap at £250, although the Tories plan to reduce it to peppercorn over time.

“Their 2024 manifesto entitled “Clear Plan – Bold Action – Secure Future” ironically is a clear plan on leasehold to boldly action a watered-down version of what they promised in the past,” said Linz Darlington, managing director of lease extension specialists Homehold.

“When taken in isolation, the Conservatives’ commitment to “Complete the process of Leasehold Reform” doesn’t sound too bad. But, it is arguably just a concession that they left leasehold reform too late in the last parliamentary process, and that the bill they hurried through in washup is half finished.”

Darlington added: “What we need from the next government is to concentrate on a successful implementation of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. They should start with the provisions that are easy to enact and don’t require further consultation, such as longer lease extensions. The current government has estimated most key provisions will be in place by ‘2025-2026’, and whoever is in power, it will take time to get this right.”

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Rishi Sunak suggested that the Conservative government has “reduced child poverty” as he announced his party’s manifesto ahead of the general election.

At a time when millions of children across the country are living in poverty and hundreds of thousands of people are relying on food banks to live, it’s no surprise his comment made at Silverstone on Tuesday (11 June) have provoked outrage.

Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party, posted on X: “How dare Sunak suggest the Tories have reduced child poverty.”

• Taxes, benefit cuts and bad jokes: Key takeaways from the Tory general election manifesto launch
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Around one million children in the UK experienced “horrifying levels of destitution” last year, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Lucas added: “He should scrap cruel two-child limit because doing so would lift 300,000 children out of the dire poverty his government has created.”

The Conservative manifesto actually celebrates the two-child limit and benefit cap, which it claims make the system “fairer to the taxpayers who pay for it and ensure benefits are always a safety net, not a lifestyle choice“.

Charities and campaigners have long called for an end to the two-child limit, which is considered “one of the cruellest welfare policies of the last decade”. Labour is also refusing to scrap the policy.

How dare Sunak suggest the Tories have reduced child poverty when @jrf_uk find 1 million children experiencing destitution with major increase since 2017. He should scrap cruel 2-child limit because doing so would lift 300,000 children out of the dire poverty his govt has created

— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) June 11, 2024

So let’s fact check it. Is Sunak right in saying his government has reduced child poverty? Well, it depends what measure you use.

There were 4.3 million children living in poverty in 2022 to 2023, according to official government statistics. This is 100,000 more than in the previous year and nearly one in three children.

By comparison, there were 3.6 million children in poverty in 2010/11. That means 600,000 more children are in poverty now than there were when the Conservatives came to power.

But Sunak is referring to absolute child poverty, which is when a person or household does not have the minimum amount of income needed to meet the minimum living requirements.

And technically, he’s right on this front. Absolute poverty fell by 1.1 million between 2009/10 and 2022/23. But absolute poverty normally falls, and this is no where near the falls we have seen historically. In the previous 13-year period, absolute poverty fell by 7.8 million.

Absolute child poverty actually rose this year, when Rishi Sunak was prime minister, by two percentage points on the previous year from 23% to 25%. This is the worst increase since 1981, and represents an additional 300,000 kids in poverty.

So what do the Tories plan on doing to help kids? It’s announced an expansion to child benefit payments, but that is most likely to benefit high earners.

Parents earning six-figure salaries could be able to keep some or all of their child benefit payments. The Conservatives would increase the income threshold at which a household starts to lose their child benefits from £60,000 to £120,000.

This would gradually be increased to £160,000. The manifesto claims around 700,000 families would benefit and it would save them nearly £1,500 on average.

Tom Waters, associate director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the BBC: “At that point, one has to ask whether it’s really worth having the additional administrative apparatus, rather than simply returning child benefit to being universal, as it always was before 2013.”

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Sunak also reiterated previously-announced plans to give working parents 30 hours of free childcare a week from when their child is nine months old to when they start school, saving eligible families an average of £6,900 per year.

Yet as the Big Issue has previously reported, children whose parents earn less than £8,650 each are not eligible for the scheme and will miss out on key opportunities for development. 

Few of the poorest families will be eligible for the full 30 hours free childcare offer, analysis from the New Economics Foundation shows. By comparison, the majority of middle and higher income households will benefit.

Dan Paskins, interim director of policy, advocacy and campaigns for Save the Children UK, said: “Being a ‘party of the family’ should mean a fair focus on the very poorest and those struggling in this country. 

“The Conservative party’s manifesto highlighted positive changes on child benefit and childcare but reforms need to be more ambitious. It’s a fact that 4.3 million children are still in poverty. All political parties must make a hopeful offer for children at this general election.”

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.

Standing at the podium at Silverstone race course, Rishi Sunak has launched the Conservative manifesto.

The choice of venue for Tuesday’s (11 June) press conference – the home of British Grand Prix – is appropriate, the prime minister quipped, given that the economy has “turned a corner”.

Among less sympathetic sections of the British commentariat, the setting solicited jokes about the government’s “wheels coming off” and the Conservatives being “stuck in the slow-lane”.

Much of the policy-package has already been announced. But from national insurance to childcare, here are 11 key take-aways from the policy package in the Tory manifesto.

National insurance tax cut

Sunak has pledged £17bn worth of tax cuts in the Tory manifeso, paid for by £12bn in welfare reductions and a £6bn in tax avoidance clampdown.  

The prime minister has promised to reduce national insurance by 2p. This cut – which takes the levy down to 6% – follows two other 2p cuts in April and January. The Tories would also abolish the main rate of self-employed national insurance entirely by the end of the next parliament.

The Conservatives have separately promised not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT. But taxes will go up for many people anyway, because the party – and their Labour opponents – will keep income tax thresholds frozen until 2028.

• Yes, National Insurance cuts have taken effect – but it doesn’t mean lower earners are better off

Sam Robinson, Senior Researcher at the Social Market Foundation, questioned the funding streams behind the tax cut.

“Unfortunately, this cut to NICs is not part of a considered reform agenda but funded by magical thinking about the scope for efficiencies in welfare reform. And cutting self-employed NICs by more than employee NICs is a strange decision that will worsen the tax bias against employment,” he said.

Welfare: Tightening disability benefit rules

The tax cuts will supposedly be largely covered by reductions in welfare spending.

“In this party, we believe it is morally right that people who can work, do work,” Sunak told Silverstone.

Previously-announced reforms include tightening access to extra universal credit and personal independence payment (PIP), and increasing the use of sanctions to punish claimants deemed not to be looking for work.

The government has described it as a “crackdown on sick note culture”, while campaigners have slammed it as “inhumane.”

Speaking today, campaigner and author Dr Frances Ryan accused Sunak of blaming disabled people for structural issues.

“Sunak framing getting people off disability benefits as a “moral mission” is a Victorian dog whistle. It frames being able to work as a virtue and being too sick to as a moral failing. It suggests the solution is, not structural change, but disabled people trying harder,” she said.

Housing: creating an ‘ownership society’  

Tory housing policy would create an “ownership society”, Sunak has pledged, where “more and more people have the security and pride of home ownership”.

The Tories would set up a scheme to help first-time buyers with government-backed mortgages. These would allow them to buy a new-build home up to the value of £400,000 with just a 5% deposit.

It’s modelled on the Help to Buy scheme that ended last year, and will cost around £1bn per year.

David Sturrock, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said that the scheme could help potential homebuyers get “onto the housing ladder” – but expressed concerns that it wouldn’t help those who most need it.

“Experience from past schemes suggests that some of the subsidy will be captured by developers in the form of higher prices and profits and that some who buy would be able to do so without the scheme,” he said.

The Conservatives would also permanently abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers purchasing a property up to £425,000.

However, where the houses for these first-time buyers will come from is another matter. The Conservatives have pledged to build 1.6 million new homes “in the right places” – i.e., not on the greenbelt. However, they have failed to meet their 2019 commitment to build 300,000 new homes every year, building an average of  189,000 houses per year.

“It takes a lot of wishful thinking to say this plan will add up to an additional 1.6 million homes,” said Gideon Salutin, a Senior Researcher at the Social Market Foundation.

“The Conservatives have pledged no new money to increase social housing, as SMF has previously called for, and meagre changes to planning by reforming brownfield sites. So long as policymakers remain this timid, we’ll continue to see slow construction and rising prices.”

New protections for renters are scarce in the Tory manifesto, though the government has reiterated its long-delayed 2019 pledge to ban Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions.

‘Triple Lock Plus’ for pensioners

The already-announced ‘Triple Lock Plus’ will mean pensioners never have to pay tax on state-pension earnings.

Without this policy, the increasing state pension would exceed the tax-free personal allowance by around 2027. The ‘Triple Lock Plus’ would see the tax-free pension allowance increased at least 2.5% or in line with the highest of earnings or inflation.

Pensions already increase in line with inflation, meaning they rocketed by £900 this year alone.

National service for teenagers

Every 18 year-old will have to partake in mandatory national service under a reelected Tory government. They would have to choose between a 12-month full-time placement in the armed forces, or 25 days unpaid mandatory volunteering in flood defence, the NHS, fire service, charities, or search and rescue.

Children: Raising the child-benefit threshold and 30 hours free childcare

Wealthy parents will continue to receive full child benefit until they earn £120,000 a year, double the current £60,000 threshold. The salary at which a parent receives no child benefit at all will also double to £160,000.

The policy will cost £1.3bn in 2029-30, Conservative HQ claims, also supposedly funded by clamping down on tax avoidance.

By September 2025, children aged between nine months and school age will get 30 hours of free childcare per week, as long as their parents are working and earning between £8,670 a year but less than £100,000.  

However, campaigners have warned there are not enough nursery spaces to meet the increased demand for childcare expected following the expansion of free childcare.

Education: Swapping so-called ‘rip-off degrees’ for apprenticeships

The Conservatives will scrap so-called “rip-off degrees”, where graduates earn less on average than they would if they had not gone to university.

The party says this would raise £900m that they would spend on creating 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

“It is a positive thing to bolster job specific apprenticeships,” Big Issue editor Paul McNamee wrote last month. “But it shouldn’t come at the cost of hammering kids who want a degree. The answer, surely, is to invest better in both, rather than demonising one against the other.”

Law and order: 8,000 more police officers

The Conservatives will commit to recruiting 8,000 additional police officers over the next three years, at an annual cost of £818m as well. They will pay for this in part by increasing visa fees.

Other law and order announcements in the Tory manifesto include raising the minimum sentence for murders in the home from 15 to 25 years.

Immigration: ‘Seeing the Rwanda plan through’ and hiking visa fees

In 2022, the Conservatives pledged to deport people who arrive on small boats to Rwanda, barring their ability to claim asylum in the UK. After years of legal challenges, the long-anticipated first flight will not take-off before polling day.

The Tories would reopen talks with other countries like Armenia and Botswana, with the aim of replicating the scheme elsewhere.

Other plans to reduce migration include a “new annual cap on visas”. The exact number would be set by the Migration Advisory Committee, with the aim of lowering it year on year.

“Our plan is clear… we will halve migration,” Sunak pledged. Part of the way to do it will be hiking visa fees. If re-elected, the government would raise the Immigration Health Surcharge for students from £776 to £1,035 a year, and increase “all visa fees” by 25%.

Environment: ‘No new green levies or charges‘

“We will put security and family finances ahead of unaffordable eco-zealotry,” the PM told the audience at the launch of the Tory manifesto. This is a reference to the PM’s net zero U-turns last year, which pushed back plans to phase out gas.  

They will also ‘back drivers’ by forcing local councils to hold a referendum on 20mph zones abolish London’s ULEZ expansion

Increase NHS spending as wait-lists reach record highs

At the Tory manifesto launch, Sunak promised to increase spending above inflation every year, recruiting 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors by the end of the next parliament.

After 13 years of Conservative rule, the NHS is in crisis. Around 7.61 million people are on elective waiting lists in England alone, while a staggering 1.5 million patients in England waited 12 hours or more after arriving at A&E over the past year.

To my left, the oboe sang the theme; it was taken up by the violins behind me. To the right, cellos danced atop the offbeat bassline. I couldn’t see the flutes, but I could clearly hear when it was their turn for the melody. It soared across the instrumentalists’ heads and around the cathedral.

As a reviewer, I’ve been privileged to have some excellent seats, stalls in some of the loveliest historic opera houses in Europe; that left-hand viewpoint in Wigmore Hall where you can perfectly see the pianist’s hands. And, as a fan, I’ve sat in different positions around the Barbican purely to hear how the acoustics change. I’m a regular purchaser of the bargainous (£8) – and vertiginous – balcony seats at the Royal Opera House. But all of these positions pale against Norwich Cathedral’s cold stone floor, where I sat as The Aurora Orchestra played the final two movements from Beethoven’s “Symphony No 3 (Eroica)”.

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When conductor Nicholas Collon invited audiences at Norfolk and Norwich Festival’s performance to sit among the ensemble, he wasn’t short of volunteers. The Aurora Orchestra has been playing in this immersive way for several years now – it’s made possible by learning symphonies off by heart. Not needing music stands allows the musicians the freedom to move around, as they did within Norwich Cathedral, encouraged to swap positions in between movements. The closing allegro molto – with its catchy motif, taught to us by Collon before the performance – gathered momentum around those brave enough to stand the spray from the French horn. “Sorry,” whispered the player, as she emptied what we will euphemistically refer to as moisture from her instrument. There was no apology necessary.

After the pandemic years – where musicians had to be two metres away from each other, and audiences even further – we couldn’t have been more delighted by the concert. The next day the congregation would be there for the usual Sunday services, though I’d already had my own near-religious experience. It’s the second time this year I’ve witnessed how Aurora’s physical approach to music can enhance the performance – as part of the ensemble’s collaboration with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, musicians played on the stairs of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. 

• How the Northern Ballet’s empty orchestra pit perfectly sums up UK’s arts crisis 
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I’m excited to hear what the group will do at this year’s Proms, when instrumentalists are joined by the BBC Singers and the National Youth Choir for Beethoven’s “Ninth by Heart” (Prom 42; 21 August).

Norwich Cathedral is one of the key venues for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, a 17-day series of events that runs across the city every May. Like Aurora, Laura Cannell used the distinctive architecture as part of her performance, positioning herself in the ‘crossing’ – the centre of the cross shape – surrounded by the audience. Her album Antiphony of the Trees – featuring melodies inspired by birdsong – took on an ethereal quality as live recorder figures were electronically looped, reverberating around the nave. Cannell’s creative use of playing two instruments simultaneously, alongside the recordings, gave the impression of an entire wind ensemble. Her swooping calls were enough to energise the peregrine falcons, who called in response from their nest on top of the spire. 

Opening up the cathedral in this way also brought a full house to hear a late-night recital by Cathedral Master of Music Ashley Grote, whose multifarious techniques in Messiaen’s ecstatic organ work L’Ascension was shared via large-screen projections across the building, allowing a rare inspection of the newly rebuilt organ, one of the largest in the UK.

Claire Jackson is a writer and editor.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

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We can take it for granted, getting out the keys, unlocking our front door and relaxing on the sofa after work – this is a moment of brief solace away from the stresses of modern life. But for many of the young people supported by Centrepoint, it is a dream. A key part of our mission is making this dream come true – helping young people into a job and a home, but right now Britain has a clear lack of the latter.

Social housing waiting lists are getting longer, with nearly 1.3 million households waiting for genuinely affordable tenancies in England alone, and while political parties have their own ways of explaining that number, what is clear is Britain’s housing stock is drying up. Right to Buy has seen hundreds of thousands of council-owned properties sold off, without new ones built to replace them, leaving some of society’s most vulnerable people totally stranded. Young people, who are so often unable to afford sky-high private rents and regularly do not have priority for social housing, have been particularly impacted by this acute lack of supply – resulting in many turning to charities like Centrepoint for support.

Research by LG Inform shows that in the last 10 years new social lettings to lead tenants aged 16-24 have dropped by 8% and that is not because demand is falling. Last year, nearly 136,000 young people in the UK faced homelessness, a figure that has been steadily rising year on year – and that doesn’t include those who do not present to their local authorities in need of homelessness support. This disparity between supply and demand suggests that Britain no longer has a wide enough safety net to help everyone in need of homelessness support and a stable home. It is, therefore, often left to charities like Centrepoint to step in when the state does not. Since the start of 2021, the length of time young people stay in our supported accommodation has been steadily increasing and is now at an average of nearly a year. This is, in part, due to long waits for social housing limiting options for those ready to move on and live independently.

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In this general election campaign, it has been positive to hear politicians talking about housing and acknowledging that the country simply needs to build more and Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change outlines how vital it is that housing gets prioritised over the next year. Homelessness charities too are united in calling for the next government to build at least 90,000 social homes every year across the next parliament. At Centrepoint, we also know that nearly half of these new properties will need to be one-bedroom homes so that young people have more opportunities to live in genuinely affordable housing. For almost a decade, more than 45% of households on waiting lists have not been entitled to larger properties. Many of these applicants will be single young people who are hoping to escape homelessness and move on from supported or temporary accommodation – for example 80% of those supported by Centrepoint in the last five years have been single with no children.

Policies to end youth homelessness are not just morally right, but also make clear economic sense. Research by Centrepoint has found youth homelessness costs the British economy, £8.5bn a year – that is approximately £27,347 for each homeless young person and equivalent to the average salary of a police officer. This includes benefit payments, costs to the criminal justice system and health services and the huge amount lost to unemployment.

At Centrepoint we are doing all we can to end youth homelessness. Our prevention work is identifying children who could be at risk of having nowhere to live, we provide safe and stable accommodation, and our Independent Living stepping-stone homes help young people into work, with rent set at no higher than a third of their salary. We want the next generation to be the first to grow up in a country where homelessness is negligible, but to achieve that everyone must do their part. Any government committed to building a new generation of truly affordable homes would get us well on the way to realising that ambition.

Dr Tom Kerridge is policy and research manager at youth homelessness charity Centrepoint.

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England’s privatised water and sewage companies paid out around £377 to shareholders for each hour they polluted last year, new research shows.

The shocking figures show that it still “pays to pollute”, campaign group We Own It have claimed.  

The UK’s 19th century plumbing infrastructure is not equipped to deal with a growing population, so the Environmental Agency allows water companies to release overflow after heavy rains. This means that the country’s waterways and seas are regularly swamped with excrement.

But the money that should be invested back into the system is funnelled into shareholder pockets, We Own It analysis suggests.

Shareholders received over £1.35bn in dividends in 2022/23 as their companies released sewage for more than 3.5 million hours last year.

 “No one else in Europe runs water like England,” said Matthew Topham, lead campaigner at We Own It. “Today’s figures are a clear reminder of why: under privatisation, you profit from pollution.”

“Privatisation is often said to have led to investment. Sadly, that’s just not true. All the cash invested has come from our bills.”

Severn Trent had the worst ratio of the English companies analysed. It released sewage for 440,446 hours last year, and paid shareholders £428m in dividends. This means it paid out £972 per hour of pollution.

They were followed by United Utilities (£692 per hour of pollution), Anglian water (£619), Northumbrian water (£396), Thames Water (£230), Wessex Water (£188), Yorkshire Water (£121), and South West Water (£23).

The only company without a comparable figure is Southern Water, which was forced into a dividend ban after a credit rating agency Fitch downgraded its credit worthy status in 2023.

Southern Water released sewage for 317,285 hours in 2023 and has paid out £2.3bn in dividends since privatisation, equivalent to £213 per hour if extrapolated across the whole privatisation period.

We Own It has launched an interactive tool to allow the public to visualise how much companies “profit from pollution” in their area.

Only re-nationalisation can fix the broken system, said Topham.

“The regulators had 35 years to get private companies working in the public’s interests. It hasn’t happened and the reality is it can’t. Regulators have a duty to shareholders, making it impossible to put our rivers and seas first,” he said.

James Wallace, CEO of River Action UK, echoed this call.

“These devastating figures show yet again that our government regulators have put polluters’ profits before people and our planet,” he said.

“With the general election looming we need the new government to regulate water companies with the full force of the law, prioritising cleaning up our rivers, securing freshwater and restoring nature.

“Failing companies should be put into special administration and refinanced with customer and public interests as well as environmental sustainability used as measures of financial performance.”

“At one workplace I put in a formal grievance about the way I was being treated. My hours were immediately cut to zero.”

Fraser McGuire, 20, is one of more than a million workers in the UK on zero-hours contracts, which come with no guarantee of hours and are widely seen as exploitative. He’s had these types of arrangements at jobs across construction and hospitality in the East Midlands.

“There’s been times [at other workplaces] where I had 50 hours one week and then 10 the next,” he told the Big Issue.

“Zero-hours contracts create a power imbalance with your employer that then makes every aspect of work more difficult. Your hours for the next week depend entirely on them so obviously you feel compelled to do stuff you don’t want or even have to do. It’s so hard to stand up for yourself because you don’t want to rock the boat – your hours could go from 40 to five.“

Supporters of zero-hour work say it offers flexibility to both worker and employer, but McGuire says that’s not the reality. “That overlooks the informal nature of it,” he added. “If you challenge something you don’t think is right or say you can’t come in, that might be the last time you get offered any shifts full stop.”

McGuire says this type of precarious work – not knowing how many hours you’ll have next week, or how much you’ll be getting paid – creates stress, damages social relationships and can impact on your ability to pass credit checks needed for housing.

As part of our Blueprint for Change, the Big Issue is calling on the new government to increase job security within its first 12 months to stop stuff like this happening. We want whoever is in charge to finally reform zero-hours contracts.

Labour, which is way ahead in the polls, has promised to do this as part of its ‘new deal for workers’. But after repeatedly pledging to ban zero-hours contracts altogether, the party last month rowed back, saying workers will be able to stay on zero-hours agreements if they choose to.

While some unions are on board with the changes, others are less impressed. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the pledge has been “watered down to almost nothing”.

The IWGB, which represents gig economy workers, and Zero Hours Justice, a campaign group fighting to abolish zero-hours contracts, both said any weaknesses or loopholes in the law can be taken advantage of by employers. 

“When wages are so low and the cost of living is so high, people are forced to take any work they can get,” said Zero Hours Justice director Jessie Hoskin. “Zero-hours contracts don’t offer choice and we know they don’t offer mutual flexibility. We have to push back on the any legislation that allows businesses the opportunity to exploit loopholes.”

McGuire, a branch officer with union Unite Hospitality, also called Labour’s move “disappointing”.

“The idea that it’s radical to ban one of the most exploitative types of contract in the country shows Labour is siding with businesses over workers,” he said. “We have such massively eroded workers’ rights in this country that even a slight improvement is seen as an attack on business.”

Businesses, meanwhile, are not happy with Labour’s watered-down pledge for the opposite reason, arguing curbs on zero-hours contracts could create a “substantial additional workload”.

Many countries have either banned zero-hours contracts or heavily regulated them, including New Zealand, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland and Norway.

Here in the UK, however, things have been moving in the opposite direction. A record 1.1 million workers are now on zero-hours contracts, with most lacking regular pay and employee protection, according to a March study by Lancaster University’s Work Foundation think tank.

Its analysis suggests 136,000 more workers were given zero-hours contracts in 2023 than in 2022, and 65% of these were handed to 16- to 24-year-olds (88,000). What’s more, three in four (73.5%) are in ‘severely insecure’ work, meaning they face contractual and financial insecurity, and a lack of access to rights and protections. Only 6.1% of the 1.1 million are in ‘secure employment’, with a regular income and access to rights. And the study shows it is young women in particular who are bearing the brunt of the severely insecure work. 

A 20-year-old woman, who has worked zero-hours contracts in customer service roles, told the Big Issue: “It is abhorrent that it’s still allowed in this country.” She said “quiet firing” – where a worker is treated badly to encourage them to leave – is common for anyone who challenges exploitative bosses.

“[Employers] can use the threat of not having hours to make you work ridiculous hours – late nights and early mornings,” she said.

Her union Unite Hospitality is now calling time on zero-hours contracts, with project worker Kevin Reynolds telling the Big Issue: “They create a massive precarity of inconsistent earnings and an inability for workers to plan any element of their lives. If this wasn’t enough, we know that workers who raise legitimate grievances in the workplace or try to encourage colleagues to join a union simply end up being given no hours of work. These Victorian practices should have ended years ago.“

In line with Labour’s plans, the Work Foundation says all workers should have a right to guaranteed hours and more predictable shift patterns, while being able to opt in to zero-hour work if they request it.

The think tank’s head of research Alice Martin said: “After a decade of indecision over zero-hours contracts, the UK has fallen behind and now our younger generation are paying the price. Other nations have already either banned zero-hours contracts or heavily regulated their use, so we need to catch up and find a better balance between workplace security and flexibility.”

Another of the Big Issue’s demands is for the new government to strengthen employment rights from day one on the job.

Under a law brought in by the Conservatives in April, workers do have the right to request flexible working from day one on the job. But employers can turn these requests down for a whole host of reasons.

Labour has promised to make “flexible working the default from day one for all workers, except where it is not reasonably feasible”.

Charity Work Rights Centre, which helps migrants and disadvantaged Brits access employment justice and improve their social mobility, wants to see other workers’ rights issues addressed.

Its senior research and policy officer Adis Sehic said: “Few people realise that unless they have two years of continuous service with their employer, they aren’t protected against unfair dismissal. We’ve seen clients sacked in the 23rd month of their job, so the employer can avoid these greater protections.

“All workers must be given protection from unfair dismissal from day one to redress the power imbalance between workers and employers. When job cuts are made, migrants and people of colour are often the first to go, but face additional barriers – including visa requirements and racism – to finding new work. Protection from unfair dismissal would ensure millions of workers have job security from the get-go.”

Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood Airport closed its doors in 2022 when its owners said it was no longer commercially viable. It is on track to reopen after a 125-year lease was signed in March.

But perhaps some more blue sky thinking could see the space and buildings utilised in a different way: what if the shuttered airport could be used to tackle the housing crisis instead?

That’s the challenge that a group of architects, academics, gardeners, structural and aerospace engineers have set themselves.

Their solution involves transforming the old Robin Hood Airport into a co-living space with room for 15,000 homes – a housing estate complete with ‘streets’ inside a terminal building, homes utilising old aeroplanes, a climbing frame made out of a cockpit and rewilded runways.

The proposal is one three up for architectural award The Davidson Prize with this year’s theme focused on rethinking homes through adapting and reusing existing materials.

While the idea is still taxiing, there are hopes it could take off in the future, offering a solution to the climate and housing crises as well as the uncertain future of the UK’s regional airports.

The Big Issue spoke to Alma-nac architects Chris Bryant and Rachel Foreman about the plans to see if they can get the idea off the ground.

The pair worked with structural engineer Brian Constant, University of Westminster gardener/architect Eric Guidbert and aerospace engineer Mark Blackwell to create a transformative vision for the 300-hectare site of the former airport in Sheffield.

Bryant says the combination of big buildings, lots of space and excellent transport links made airports an excellent choice for housing estates.

“Airports are well connected. They’re pretty soulless places, but there’s also huge amounts of land,” he says.

“The infrastructure we have now will not be the infrastructure that we need in 25 years. So we are going to be left with airports and airfields.

“Commercial airports tend to be very well connected to city centres, have large areas of flat land, they have big sheds which are brilliant to use either to create really interesting housing or to create community spaces or a space to build new housing.”

Bryant believes advances in aviation technology could mean shorter runways are needed for drones and fixed-wing aircrafts and self-driving cars could make the infrastructure around airports more efficient over the next 25 years. 

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

That means some much-needed space to build could be opened up without using the green belt or the grey belt, as Labour is targeting. 

But it is not as simple as just throwing up as many homes as possible and calling it a day.

The proposal calls for a shift in how people live too, growing materials sustainably on site and repurposing redundant aircraft as part of the process.

Insulation from planes could be recycled and incorporated into homes, parts of the aircraft could be used to create balconies in transforming the terminal building into a community and living space and so on.

“We’re suggesting self-build communities,” says Bryant. “You’ve got all these great big air hangars, you could grow hemp and native timber species in the land, you could build your own home over generations.”

It’s not for everyone, Bryant and Foreman admit, but they are working to make it a cost-effective way of living for people who are locked out of the housing market.

“As a younger person I think it’s really hard to buy a house now,” says Foreman. “Even just getting on the property ladder at all I don’t see how it is getting better without a sort of shift in either the way that we live and the way that we share and the way that we invest together.”

The housing crisis facing Gen Z is one of the criteria in mind for Davidson Prize judges.

Alice Finney, a journalist on the judging panel, tells the Big Issue that the radical nature of the proposal impressed judges, who will announce a winner on 19 June.

“We were looking for really robust, radical approaches, perhaps using spaces that we haven’t considered before,” says Finney.

“It’s a topic that, I think, aligns really nicely with the focus that we had on Generation Z and their housing crisis and is tied really nicely to the climate crisis.” 

The climate crisis means the tide is turning against airports in the future too.

France has already banned short-haul domestic flights under 2.5 hours and Spain looks likely to follow suit.

While there is no indication that will be replicated in the UK anytime soon, the race to limit carbon emissions to reach net-zero is likely to see fewer flights in the skies.

“There are quite a few airports in the UK currently that just fly to Scotland, for example – we believe that shouldn’t particularly be a thing in the future,” says Foreman.

The Travel Foundation, a group advocating for positive tourism, found only one scenario for the tourism sector to achieve net-zero by 2050 while also allowing for growth.

It called for less of a focus on offsetting carbon emissions and instead focusing on decarbonisation and capping the number of long-haul flights at 2019 levels – about 120 million return trips.

Long distance trips make up just 2% of the total journeys but contribute the most pollution. If they continued at this pace, they would account for 41% of the tourism sector’s total emissions by 2050 compared to 19% in 2019.

Meanwhile, regional airports have been facing an uncertain future since Covid hit the travel sector hard.

One former regional airport that shut its doors in 2011 could even see homes built on the site in the near future.

Sutton Harbour Group – the owner of the former Plymouth City Airport site – is reportedly eyeing the possibility of building after an order from the government’s planning inspector protecting against development lapsed this year.

If this is a sign of the way of travel for the future, the Robin Hood Airport proposal is looking to spark conversation now on how the opportunity can be harnessed to tackle the housing crisis.

Beyond The Davidson Prize, Alma-nac plans to convince the government or other organisations to back them to explore the idea of using airports for housing.

“We understand the short-term economic gains and if there’s a job shortage, it will generate jobs. We understand that mayors are there, elected every four or five years, to do that. But it’s not a long-term solution and we do need to have some long-term thinking about what we’re going to do with this infrastructure,” says Bryant.

“We understand that people will reopen airports but we also need to have visions about what we are going to do in 15, 20, 25 years and we need to have these conversations now because it takes that time to have huge strategic change.

“Investing in time and effort now in these ideas means that as it changes, and it will change, that we can implement these ideas and aren’t just left with all this land and it becomes a race to build whatever we can.”

If the idea takes off, perhaps it could play a role in landing the homes Britain desperately needs.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more.