Fran Bennett was appointed to the Social Security Advisory Committee in 2025.
Fran had an academic teaching and research post in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, for over 20 years and is now Emeritus Fellow. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and has a particular interest in social security policy, gender issues, and poverty and participation.
Fran has written extensively on social policy issues for the UK government and others and was a specialist advisor to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee for its inquiry into Universal Credit (2020).
Fran has worked for the Child Poverty Action Group and Oxfam, was involved with a local advice centre for two decades and is a longstanding member of the policy advisory group of the Women’s Budget Group. She has also been an independent consultant and continues to work with the European Social Policy Analysis Network.
It is just a year now since I was interviewed to be a member of the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC). This means that I have now been working as a committee member for some six months or so - …