Social Assistance and Territorial Justice: The Example of Single Payments

ABSTRACT Social assistance in many countries is administered locally. Centralised, uniform schemes, such as those which operate in Britain are often assumed to guarantee, or at least to enhance, territorial equity, that is the equal treatment of individuals with identical needs irrespective of where they live. This assumption is examined with respect to the system of single payments—lump sum payments to meet exceptional needs—which existed prior to the 1988 social security reforms. Although much of the geographic variation in the volume of awards which used to exist is explicable in terms of variations in the level of need, territorial inequity is demonstrated to have occurred in what was a nationally administered and closely regulated scheme. The reasons for the inequity seem in part to have been due to variations in office work flow and working practices, welfare rights activity and unidentified processes linked in some way to the regional administrative structure of DHSS.