Welfare, Employment, and Energy Demand

Dr Catherine Butler@drcbutler

Project Methods

Document analysis

Policy and stakeholder interviews

Case study interviews

• Analysis of policies, speeches, existing analyses and data

• Develop narrative accounts of policy impact

• Qualitative Interviews with policy, agencies, ngos, academics (e.g. DWP, DECC, Ofgem, Citizens advice bureau)

• Cardiff, Bristol, York• Policy delivery roles (e.g. job

centres, local authorities)• Biographical interviews with people

affected by DWP Policy

Welfare and employment policy

Configuring energy demand

• Work and employment • Housing and household

demographics

• Digitalization • Government Estates

Policy

Process

Work and DWP policy

“Work is – and always will be – the best route out of poverty and with welfare reform, Universal Credit, tax cuts and the introduction of the National Living Wage, we are making sure that it always pays to work” (David Cameron, 2016)

“Your work coach may refer you to these schemes… you may do work experience to add some career history to your CV”. (Back to Work Schemes, 2014)

“Private sector employment over 26 million, unemployment rate at 5.1% and the claimant count at its lowest level in over 40 years”. (Priti Patel, 2016)

Being employed helps promote recovery and rehabilitation and prevents the harmful physical, mental and social effects of long-term sickness absence. Fit for Work is designed to assist you as an employer in helping employees to get back to work as soon as is appropriate. (DWP, 2014)

Work and energy demand

Worklessness – individual

Getting into work - fit for

work & employment

coaches

Practices –continuities and

increases in energy demand e.g. work travel

Re-imagining work policy

Workplace hubs in areas of high employment (Spurling

and McMeekin, 2015)

Practice change - materials, temporal ordering, meanings

Re-imaginings

Housing and energy

• DWP role in codifying particular ideas about living arrangements and energy use

• Connections between DWP and DECC

• Focus on fuel poverty – enabling access (rather than reducing dependencies)

“From that point of view things like the Winter Fuel Payment and the Cold

Weather Payment are hugely welcome and greatly appreciated. Older people will

fight fairly furiously to keep them”. (Interviewee charity – policy)

“In essence it’s a fuel poor commitment… So generally that

involves investing in new gas infrastructure in areas of deprivation

throughout the UK that are off gas. That includes the facilitation or installation of

heating systems” (Interviewee – industry)

Housing and energy

Housing – fuel poverty - financial support for energy

needs

Winter fuel and cold weather payments –

gas boilers – grid connection

Practices –continuities and

in resource intensity and energy needs

Re-imagining housing policy

Policies to reduce dependency on

resources/needs for energy

Practice change - materials, meanings

Re-imaginings

Digitalisation and DWP process

“you’ve got all these Job Centres and part of a strategy for reducing that is to consolidate Job Centres and move everything online” (interviewee policy DWP)

Policies to transition benefits and pensions

systems to online

Practice change – role constituting the need for IT

Concluding reflections…

• Requirements for energy constituted (in part) by policies and processes that cross multiple areas of government policy

• Energy intensity and use addressed as an inter-governance issue

• Reflexive engagement with the ways that different departments constitute need and could reshape configurations

Thank you

c.butler@exeter.ac.uk

@drcbutler