A two-year Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) investigation into poverty which is expected to influence party manifestos for next year’s general election was celebrated at a major event today.

Leading figures from mainstream political parties welcomed the Breakthrough Britain 2015 project and discussed how they plan to tackle disadvantage.

During the course of the study, CSJ researchers travelled more than 50,000 miles, carried out 150 evidence hearings with experts, visited almost 1,000 poverty-fighting charities, polled 6,000 members of the public and met with 2,000 external specialists.

A total of 192 recommendations have emerged, which set out a dynamic agenda to reduce deprivation and improve life chances.

Conservative policy guru Oliver Letwin MP was joined by Pensions Secretary Steve Webb MP and Lord Maurice Glasman, originator of Blue Labour, at the event to discuss Breakthrough Britain 2015 and put forward their social policy plans.

The CSJ has produced individual reports on the main drivers of poverty – educational failure; economic dependency; family breakdown; unmanageable debt; addiction and an additional report on the role of the voluntary sector in tackling disadvantage.

Six interim reports last summer were followed up this year with chapters outlining robust and radical policy solutions for the incoming government next year.

This is a follow up study to the original Breakthrough Britain reports in 2007 – which inspired a host of major Coalition policy changes. Prime Minister David Cameron recently called these reports “a major influence on this Government”.

The CSJ exposed shocking levels of educational failure which are devastating communities across the country. In Requires Improvement, researchers highlighted how some neglected four-year-olds start school wearing nappies and are unable to answer to their own names. More than 228,500 pupils leave school every year without A-C grades in English and maths, which the CSJ said can fuel a host of social problems.

In the follow-up report, Closing the Divide, the CSJ put forward a number of recommendations – including a plan to increase the number of state boarding school places for disadvantaged children.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said the CSJ was "absolutely right to recognise the transformative impact state boarding schools can have". The Sun also backed the move, saying in an editorial that if the Government does not implement it then Labour should “outflank” them by supporting it.

The CSJ also outlined a new scheme to encourage talented teachers and head teachers to work at struggling schools and incentives to get successful academy chains to start working in underperforming areas.

Read coverage of the reports in the Telegraph, The Times, The Sun, BBC, Independent, Metro, Express and Daily Mail.

The CSJ’s Signed On, Written Off interim report exposed the levels of worklessness and economic dependency in the UK – highlighting that total spending on social security in the five years of this Parliament will top £1trillion.

To combat the economic and social cost of this, the Journey to Work report called for a new ‘Youth Offer’ to ensure ‘everybody is doing something’ to be in training, education or work. 

A new UCAS-style system would help young people apply for education, training or work opportunities and the introduction of a ‘Community Wage’ would help people become work ready.

The CSJ also calls for radical reform of Jobcentre Plus to get more help to unemployed people. 

The reports were covered by the Sunday Times, Daily Mail, BBC, Express and Evening Standard. 

Listen to an interview with Christian Guy on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme here. He was also interviewed about the report on the BBC News Channel, watch it here.

The CSJ’s interim report shone a light on the link between family instability and social breakdown. The study Fractured Families showed that the UK’s lone parent tally was nearing two million and that around one million children grow up without contact with their fathers.

Researchers argued that the human impact was devastating and had become an emergency. In the follow up report Fully Committed? the CSJ recommended that the Government do far more to give relationship support to struggling couples and called for the nationwide roll-out of 'Family Hubs' across the country.

It added that fathers should have the right to be named on birth certificates to acknowledge the significance of fathers and the report proposed that registry office fees for marriage should be scrapped to promote the importance of the institution.

Read coverage of the reports in the Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Telegraph and the Independent. Watch an interview with the CSJ on BBC Breakfast here and a feature on BBC News here.  

Two million people are driven to high-cost credit every year because it is the only loan they can get, the CSJ revealed in its work on problem debt.

The report Restoring the Balance also showed eight million British households have no savings and that recent payday loan caps could push thousands of people to loan sharks.

It recommended that the Government cut red tape to pave the way for a revolution in ethical lending. The CSJ wants to see the creation of new Community Banks, which would be able to offer more stable loans and banking services at cheaper rates and on better terms.

To promote a better savings culture, the CSJ calls on employers to introduce auto-enrolment savings schemes for staff. It also recommends offering better advice to the public so they can avoid problem debt.

The interim report was covered as an exclusive on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Read coverage of the debt work in the Times, Telegraph, Spectator, Daily Mail, Guardian, BBC and Channel 4.

The UK was revealed as the ‘addicted man of Europe’ during the CSJ's work on substance abuse. The interim No Quick Fix report showed how the country has become a hub for ‘legal highs’ and how the Government was struggling to ban dangerous substances.

It also revealed that abstinence-based treatment services were being cut back and that more than 40,000 heroin addicts have been ‘parked' on state-supplied substitutes like methadone for more than four years.

In Ambitious for Recovery the CSJ called for a ‘treatment tax’ of one pence per unit of alcohol to be added to off licence sales to fund a new generation of rehabilitation services. The report also predicted that deaths related to ‘legal highs’ could be as high as those related to heroin in two years. It also called for new measures to ban shops that sell ‘legal highs’.

Watch coverage of the reports on ITV here, BBC Breakfast here and Sky News here. Print coverage is also available from the Sunday Times, Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Telegraph  and The Sun.

Red tape and regulation are holding back the Government’s Big Society, a major CSJ report on Britain's voluntary sector revealed.

Rules intended to protect workers' rights are inadvertently deterring small charities from competing for government contracts when services are put out for competitive tender, Something’s Got to Give said.

The report identifies a number of voluntary sector 'cold spots', areas where charitable efforts to deal with social breakdown are thin on the ground. It found that there are far more charities in the relatively prosperous south of the country than in the disadvantaged post-industrial north. Read coverage in the Telegraph.

The CSJ will next week publish a host of recommendations to help the social sector play a far greater role in tackling poverty – the final report in the Breakthrough Britain 2015 series.