07 October 2016
The Minister for Social Security, Deputy Susie Pinel, has today published the Department’s 2015 report. This comprehensive document provides a full account of all of the Department’s activities in one publication, combining information on both contributory and tax-funded benefits and services.
From today (7 October) people will be able to view and download the entire document via the States website.
The 2015 annual report provides a summary of departmental activity during the year. This includes:
- taking a further significant step in discrimination legislation with four new protected characteristics: sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and pregnancy/maternity introduced from 1 September 2015;
- bringing in the first phase of family friendly employment legislation, providing rights to maternity, adoption and parental leave
- extending the support provided to help people back into work with new schemes aimed at parents with nursery age children and people with an ongoing long term health condition.
- improving customer services and streamlining benefit administration in key areas such as Income Support
- consolidating the support available to older people during the first full year of the Long-Term Care benefit, and securing the funding to strengthen the 65+ Health Plan which provides pensioners with benefits towards dental, optical and chiropody costs
Deputy Pinel said: “2015 was an eventful year for the Department. In September last year the States approved a package of measures to maintain tax funded benefit spend at the 2015 level by the end of the Medium Term Financial Plan in 2019. In order to ensure that public funding could be released to support the strategic priorities of improving health and education, very careful consideration was given to identify areas where changes could be made whilst maintaining a fair and well-targeted benefit system.
During this period we continued to make significant progress in addressing the Island’s historically high levels of unemployment. Even including the extra groups brought under the back to work umbrella during 2015, the number of people registered as actively seeking work (ASW) fell to 1,390 by the end of December 2015 In this area I am fortunate to have the support of Deputy Graham Truscott as Assistant Minister, to whom I have delegated responsibility for our Back to Work programme.”
“As a working mother, I am particularly pleased to have overseen the introduction of family friendly employment protection and the extension of the discrimination law to include four new protected characteristics of sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and pregnancy/maternity.,
The annual report is now available to read using the link below.
Social Security Annual Report 2015
gov.je