NI Anti Poverty Network criticises Executive's Anti-Poverty Strategy

"Both the NI Audit Office and the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee have been clear that a strategy must have certain characteristics. These include: specific poverty reduction targets, strategic outcomes supported by specific actions and interventions, and a ringfenced budget to deliver the strategy. 

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"It's a big community here and it's the future that matters the most, this can be very successful in Bellaghy"

"The Minister says targets and specific actions will come with Action Plans – but every expert, every oversight group, is clear that a Strategy requires measureable outcomes. This is another missed opportunity to take specific measureable actions to tackle poverty here. Instead, we have a recycling of existing interventions and plans which will not eradicate poverty.

"It is hard to see how we can make a formal response to a document that contains no elements of a Strategy.  Our initial response must be to ask the Minister to go back to the drawing board and produce a Strategy that meets the basic requirements laid out by oversight bodies such as the NI Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee."