Current Research Programmes
Building Financially Healthy Lives and Communities
We want to ensure that all British households lead financially healthy lives. This requires us to think about how they can be assisted to meet their day to day costs and also build up savings and plan positively for their future. We know that too many households are struggling financially, and that these are often geographically concentrated. Even with very careful money management, the combination of low pay, insecure [...]
Getting Britain Out of Debt
We believe that over-indebtedness is receiving insufficient policy attention. Not only does it have major human and social costs, but the debt burden is negatively impacting on our economic performance. The extent to which debt poses a burden on households is contingent on three factors: (i) the amount of debt that is outstanding; (ii) the cost of that debt, in terms of interest, fees and minimum payment [...]
Improving Credit Regulation
Inadequate regulation of credit markets has created all three of the major economic crises experienced in Britain since 1970. The removal of direct Government controls over lending and the replacement of these with the 'Competition and Control' system of regulation in 1971 lay behind the Heath Government's 'dash to growth'. It relied on credit markets being controlled only through the manipulation of interest rates by the Bank of England, [...]
Latest News
Redesigning Financial Services and Support | Programme now on-line
Redesigning financial services and support 25th April 2018 | Resource for London Book your place today Our draft programme has now been published. Download it now to see our fantastic line-up of speakers. Our headline speakers include Christopher Woolard, Director of Strategy and Competition at the Financial Conduct Authority; Lucie Russell, Director of the Fair by Design Campaign, [...]
Join Michael Sheen at our Redesigning Financial Services and Support Conference
Redesigning financial services and support 25 April 2018 | Resource for London Following the launch of Michael Sheen’s End High Cost Credit Alliance, we invite you to join CfRC and Toynbee Hall’s Financial Health Exchange to critically assess the latest developments in credit markets and discuss possible new models of support for low to middle income households. We are delighted to announce that Michael Sheen [...]
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Follow us on TwitterRedesigning financial services and support
25th April 2018
Resource for London, Holloway Road, N7 6PA
Following the launch of Michael Sheen’s End High Cost Credit Alliance, we invite you to join CfRC and Toynbee Hall’s Financial Health Exchange to critically assess the latest developments in credit markets and discuss possible new models of support for low to middle income households. We are delighted to announce that Michael will be attending the event, and that our excellent speakers will also include Christopher Woolard, the FCA’s Director of Strategy and Competition.
The conference will present the emerging findings from our current research programme which:
- Supports Michael Sheen’s End High Cost Credit Alliance to expand the provision of affordable financial services;
- Scopes out possible new models of support with the Local Government Association and ten local authorities to better integrate welfare benefit and local discretionary payments with debt advice and financial inclusion activity;
- Explores the use of flexible rent payments as a means of helping low income tenants to manage income and expenditure pressures without the need for them to use credit;
- Builds on the lessons from the Finance Innovation Lab’s Financial Health Fellowship to create an effective Community of Practice for people seeking to develop socially responsible products and services;
- Develops the case for extending the payday lending cap to all forms of consumer credit and to eradicate ‘unjust debt’.
The Decline of Local Welfare Schemes in England
September 2017
Local welfare provision in England is at risk of collapsing if Government does not urgently review its approach and step in with more funding for local authorities. A failure to act will create widespread destitution, and put even greater pressure on already over-stretched housing, health, and social care services. Those are the key messages from our latest research, which has been funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and which involved an assessment of Cabinet and Committee papers detailing current budgets for local welfare schemes and the reasons for cuts. From this exercise we were able to obtain information about current funding levels for schemes in around 70 percent of English local authorities. We also conducted interviews with eighteen people who have directly affected by the closure of schemes in Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, and Oxfordshire.
Latest posts
Redesigning Financial Services and Support | Programme now on-line
Redesigning financial services and support 25th April 2018 | Resource for London Book your place today Our draft programme has now been published. Download it now to see [...]
Happy 70th Birthday Udo Reifner! A new interactive blog reviewing his ideas is launched
On the occasion of Professor Udo Reifner's 70th birthday, an interactive blog of reviews of Udo's work has been published by the Institut Fur Finanzdienstleistungen ('Institute for Financial Services' - IFF) in Hamburg. As the [...]
Debt advisers get behind the call for a household debt jubilee
Debt advisers organised in the Manchester Money Advice Group have drawn up a statement in support of our call for a household debt Jubilee. In a letter to The Guardian, twelve debt advisers have expressed [...]
BRITAIN’S PERSONAL DEBT CRISIS | How we got here and what to do about it.
Damon Gibbons | 1 Jul 2014
In Britain’s Personal Debt Crisis, CfRC Director Damon Gibbons, provides an assessment of how, over a period of 40 years, we have come to be over-reliant on financial services, and credit in particular. Our basic needs – for affordable homes, for education, decent jobs, and dignity in old age – are all now contingent on our ability to access financial services. But the way in which these are provided is highly regressive and is contributing to growing wealth inequality. Credit expansion has also contributed to our economic decline, paved the way for attacks on the welfare state, and fed the growth of a highly individualistic and unsustainable consumer culture.
Whilst charting these developments, the book also outlines a programme for national renewal, including measures to bring credit back under control and restore the financial sector to servants of government economic policy.
“Damon’s book provides a timely insight into the power of personal debt to not just make life a daily struggle of the public but do long term damage to the future our country. He matches detailed analysis with a passionate call for action that many will find compelling”
Stella Creasy MP
”Damon Gibbons has campaigned over many years for fair lending at a reasonable price to low income households. From doorstep lending to payday loans he has challenged established ideas and called for a cap on costs – a policy now endorsed by the Government.”
Paul Lewis, journalist and broadcaster
Damon is one of those rare people who is able to combine a social policy researchers’ attention to detail with a campaigners’ zeal and passion to make change happen. The fact that he has managed to sustain this work for more than a decade, even when it has often meant swimming against the prevailing opinion of the times, is remarkable. Not only that, his analysis of the problems and solutions to Britain’s personal debt crisis is always insightful, and almost always right!”
Niall Cooper, Director, Church Action on Poverty
”This is a timely analysis of the growth in personal debt and a passionate plea for action. Few people understand the working of credit markets better than Damon and his proposals for effective regulation deserve serious attention.”
Paul Blomfield MP