I have posted below a letter received by a Kentish Town* man who is in his early 60s and disabled.
The man receives housing benefit for his one-room housing association flat.
The letter is from Camden Council.
As you can see, the letter is very unpleasant. I am sure that I would not want to get one of these. The letter begins with an accusation. It says that the council has received correspondence from the DWP which *suggests* the Kentish Town man has another person living with him. The letter gives no details about that correspondence. Neither does it explain how the DWP’s correspondence led the council to believe that another person was living in the Kentish Town man’s home. No proof or evidence to support this accusation is offered. The letter simply makes a statement. It also makes a threat. The letter says that the Kentish Town man’s housing benefit claim could be in jeopardy if he does not answer the points raised.
You can imagine how people feel when this sort of thing drops through the door:
This is the kind of filthy correspondence that people receive from councils and government departments out of the blue. DWP Customer Compliance letters strike the same sinister tone. So, as I understand it, do the letters received by people who have their child tax credit after being accused of living with people they’ve never heard of.
I see a lot of these letters. They cause an extraordinary amount of stress for people. They absolutely assume guilt from the off and tell people to prove their innocence. Certainly, that’s how the recipients of these letters perceive things:
“Councils, government departments and their associates regularly state that they will come down hard on people who abuse their staff, yet they ought to be aware how their standard procedures and threatening standard text approaches are in themselves abusive,” the man in this story wrote to me. “Just because we have no real bargaining power does not give them licence to bully us about.”
Indeed.
No concession is made to a recipient’s personal circumstances in these letters. No attempt is made to cushion the blow, or to make sure people are in a position to cope with such an accusation, or even to respond in timeframe (I have dealt with a number of housing benefit claimants whose learning and literacy difficulties mean that they find responding in timeframe, or responding at all, very difficult). No attempt is made even to speak politely. The letter recipient may be older and disabled, or have learning difficulties, or live alone with very little support (the four people I know who have received these sorts of letters this year have all been in one or a number of those groups). Too bad for them. Officialdom is not required to act civilly towards benefit claimants. So it doesn’t. No matter that contrary to popular imaginings, people who receive these letters can be innocent. Benefit fraud rates are actually low (they’re certainly a lot lower than people like to think) but the world is led to believe that all benefit claimants are dodgy by definition. Time and time again, official contact with benefit claimants reflects that contempt. In the general run, you’re really supposed to be thought innocent until you’re proven guilty, but that’s just not the way things roll in some arenas.
Benefit claimants and immigrants, my friends – the two groups of people on whom it is open season.
So there it is. The onus was entirely on the Kentish Town to prove that the allegation in the letter was wrong. It was wrong, too. The Kentish Town man did not have another person living with him. He had never heard of the individual who was named in the letter. He had to get his local councillor involved to sort things out.
I’ve seen the letters that Camden sent back. The council agreed that the man had no case to answer, but defended its letter:
“The letter is a standard letter and gives one months timescale to provide the information. We always state that if we do not receive a reply within a month your claim maybe suspended or stopped. This does not mean that we consider him to be guilty of benefit fraud.
“I apologise if Mr_ considers this to be accusatory but this is not the case and is just a standard paragraph in all of our letters where we request information.”
I say bollocks to that. Everyone who receives these letters has reason to think the letters are accusatory. The sentence “we have received correspondence from the Department for Work and Pensions which would suggest a Mr_ is living with you,” is the giveaway in this one. It reads like an accusation. At the very least, it is a sentence to terrify people. It’s up to the letter recipient to deny the accusation and/or prove innocence. I don’t much care for the argument that it’s just a standard letter, either. A nasty standard letter should not somehow have that nastiness excused just because it is the same letter that is sent to everyone. Quite the reverse.
I rang Camden and asked the benefits officer who (ultimately) answered if there was a system in place for people who might require additional support in these frightening scenarios. I was told that there wasn’t and that the same letter sent was sent to everybody. The only instance in which someone might be protected from such a letter would be one where the benefit recipient had an appointee who dealt with the mail.
Tough shit otherwise, I guess.
If anyone wants to send examples of these sorts of letters and/or accusations, please go ahead. Quite a lot of people are angry about the way that they are treated as benefit claimants and want to raise more awareness. Contact details here.
*Update: changed Kilburn to Kentish Town. Thought the address was in Kilburn but it is Kentish Town.
Perhaps it’s not just the bit about ‘correspondence received from DWP’, but also the tag on bit about, “In order to ensure that we are assessing your benefit entitlement correctly…”
It has been argued that the reason councils want such information is to ensure that the person whose details the DWP has passed on as a new tenant is actually living at the stated address. Why should a fraudulent claim under someone else’s name at the same address make any difference to the entitlement of the Camden letter’s receipient’s benefit entitlements?
This is all just part and parcel of the new attitudes towards benefit claimants of all kinds. Disabled and unemployed alike.
Benefits served with a sneer.
This kind of letter seems to be becoming a kind of common currency from organisations such as the DWP, local councils and housing associations. I myself recently received a quite threatening note under my door from my housing association’s mysteriously named ‘Community Solutions Team’ which essentially and allegedly deals with anti-social behaviour.
In my personal case, it was about alleged noise disturbance, which they had heard, but not in a clear enough manner to determine whether it was coming from my flat. This was in response to a complaint made by the tenant who lives above me, who’s reasonableness can be determined by the fact that they have also complained about my next door neighbour listening to his radio, talking on his phone out in the garden. I challenged their assertions, asking a) who was complaining, (we have the right to know who our accusers are) even though I knew full well who it was, and also, and more crucially, where their proof was, knowing that they’d need a whole battery of evidence and measurements relating to decibels etc, and even then, it would have had to have been a ‘reasonable person’ judgement as to whether the noise levels were excessive, and the fact that they were stood in the flat above me when they allegedly heard music or whatever coming from my flat, but couldn’t ascertain whether it was indeed coming from my flat just about says it all in that instance. I’m pretty much able to hold my own with such officious staff, as most of them are pretty clueless, and are basically bullies who try bluster and threats, all in the knowledge that they have a little bit of power, and that many who live in social housing are either so blattered by life that they just comply with everything they are told to do, or violently kick off, and are then easily dealt with by the police.
However, one very disturbing experience I had some years ago was when a friend was first diagnosed with serious mental health issues, and had, just prior to being diagnosed, become quite disruptive, upsetting some of the other tenants here. Whislt I can, to an extent, understand the less than positive reaction of my neighbours, I cannot for the life of me either forgive, or forget the way in which the housing association’s Community Solutions Team persistently and willfully proceeded as if my friend was behaving anti-socially, and not only that, contrived to misconstrue my letters pointing out to them that in order to be responsible of behaving anti-socially someone would have had to have been in a sound enough state of mind to have been able to appreciate that their actions were causing distress to others. My friend certainly was not aware of that at all, was suffering from hallucinations and in general in a very bad and scary place mentally. Yet, whilst I was trying hard to get my friend help, by trying to get the housing association to take their responsibilities to tenants seriously, and give me pointers of where to get her the help she needed, or indeed, to stop sitting on their hands and actually set the wheels in motion themselves, they persisted in merely dismissing it as anti-social behaviour, that their ultimate way of dealing with is eviction. This went on for a month, until I became so frustrated with dealing with idiots, I contacted my local Assembly Member in the Welsh Assembly, and it had an immediate affect. The AM sent me a copy of his correspondence, which was very short and to the point, at about six lines of text. Basically he asked them, but not in these words, what they hell did they think they were playing at, and to get their fingers out. I didn’t know how to handle situations like this, so I was completely in the dark, and felt that as a responsible social landlord, surely housing associations should have policies and procedures in place for such eventualities, as one in four of us will suffer from some kind of mental health issue, and people in stressed and anxious circumstances, i.e. poor people, will likely to suffer more. It’s scandalous that RSLs and the like are allowed to get away by not having policies and procedures in place for such eventualities, and that some of them at least, regard what is clearly a case of mental illness as anti-social behaviour, to be dealt with through scarily worded letters that threaten and cajole and insist that people prove their innocence just shows a level of incompetence that really we should not have to be dealing with.
Why does the burden of proof have to be with the recipients of benefits, or those falsely accused of cohabiting? And even if there needs to be questions asked, surely common courtesy demands that the letters at least be polite and enquiring rather than accusatory and threatening.
A lot of ‘neighbour noise’ in social housing can be attributed to lousy sound insulation.
Eg, when I lived in private rented accommodation in the Swiss Cottage ward bit of NW6 postcode in the early 1980’s, one of my neighbours had me hear my radio through headphones rather than speakers. Her reaction to my presence with only paper thin partition walls was mild compared to her successor. He dragged the live-in rent collector upstairs to stand outside my one-roomed flat door to witness the sound of me clearing my throat which he was sure I did just to annoy him. Fortunately for me she was not impressed with his argument, though my room door probably provided better noise insulation than the partition walls.
My later move into better-though-not-perfectly-sound-insulated social housing was fortunately within less than a month of my turning over in my sleep one night and receiving an apparent elbow thump the other side of the partition wall.
As for decibel counts, what’s 47dB? See Mike McNabb’s Community Care blog post Pointless Asbo alert: this time for enjoying sex
They have not even got the balls to sign these letters either I wonder why!
I am a retired Housing officer and when someone complains of loud noise/music from another property we have to take action by writing to the tenant to say someone has complained about their loud music – sometimes this makes them stop and consider their neighbours – other times we have to take it further but we are like everyone else, subject to cutbacks – at one point we were supposed to be dealing with a specific number of properties that was manageable – I had a case load of four times that amount and worked an extra two to three hours a day unpaid to try to keep up – yes we use standard letters and sometimes adjust to specific concerns and sometimes we know it is just someone having a moan for no real reason but we still have to spend time logging it and logging our actions when we would much prefer to be dealing with someone who has mental health problems and needs a lot more of our time – but we just don’t have the time or skills to work as a professional in the mental health trade – we just do what we can, make referrals to others who have equally heavy caseloads and cannot cope with the high demands on their time either – its all sticking plasters really.
Thanks for this, Pat.
I hope that as you are now a retired housing officer, you will feel more at liberty to speak out against cuts in council spending and the fallout therefrom.
Re Leon’s point about their ‘not even having the balls to sign the letter themselves’ there has been at least one case reported in Camden New Journal of staff being harassed and abused themselves, and legal action taken against the perpetrator. But councillors should consider what could drive a ‘service user’ to harass and abuse staff. It has also been reported elsewhere that jobcentre staff use false names.
The DWP has not helped staff-claimant relations by attempting to ban union posters that have highlighted the culture of being nasty or at least not empathic toward claimants. See the posters the government tried to ban
Its never easy and yes there are things I hate about it – currently I have to claim council tax benefit and when I handed my form in the woman treated me like I was dirt. I have a lot of empathy for a lot of the clients but I did get cynical when i hand over a 6 bedroom brand new house to a man with 8 kids on benefits and he tells me he wants a bigger one with a bedroom each for his children and there is no room for his chest freezer – another person told me it was our responsibility to pay for his utilities for him (yeah right) I have been threatened, spoken to like dirt and had to keep the smile on my face and be polite – I saw people on benefits with brand new cars and massive TV’s but what can you do – I also saw people who were very deserving and needed more help than I could give and all I could do was make a referral – you do what you can – you are overworked and its a thankless job and I am glad I am out of it tbh – I have seen a colleague be slapped for telling someone the person they wished to see was out but at least while I was there i did try to help people
How are you able to judge who is Deserving or Non Deserving?
Just because someone has a car means nothing. They may well have had a reasonable job and lost it?
Its sometimes too easy to point the finger on ‘Shapshots’ especially with all the propaganda out there designed to get just the response you have just described. they are designed to divide us to make us more powerless than we already are.
Look up the food chain when you point a finger, thats where the real crime goes on.
The people I was housing at that point were homeless families on benefits who had been in the system on waiting lists in temporary accommodation and were mainly people who had never worked in UK but had come from abroad – I had access to their files so knew the facts and thats how I was able to discern people who were very deserving – people who were incapable of helping their selves due to mental health issues or other issues and you learn on the job and by reading files – so yes, thats how I could tell but thank you for asking
Perhaps unwittingly you’ve just proved my point. Whilst I appreciate that when someone makes a complaint it has to be investigated, the fact that you state that you have to write to say that ‘someone has complained about their loud music’ proves my point, an allegation regarded as a proven fact with no attempt at corroboration. I appreciate that many workers in this field, and those related, are extremely pressurised, stressed out, and most certainly overworked, but is this tenant’s fault? Surely a far more intelligent, and rational approach would be to relate concerns to one’s colleagues, and one’s union, which should be socially aware enough to realise that the lack of funding, (not helped by so called austerity cuts) are not doing anyone but the 1% any good, and workers to continue to prop up the system responsible for the underlying causes of the mess are not really doing themselves, or the people they are trying to help any favours long term, or even in the short term come to that. Unions should be doing much more, and if they are not, why aren’t the members, who supposedly care, doing something about it? Unions are supposedly democratic institutions.
Whilst I appreciate that traditional industrial action may not be the wisest choice in dealing with the increasingly socially toxic situation, there are other ways of dealing with things like this, such as working to rule, which is often great, as in no way can anyone be legitimately sanctioned for only working according to the demands of their contract of employment, and whilst I know that doing this would often cause something of a crisis of conscience in people who genuinely want to work in people related jobs, at the end of the day, we all need to consider our own needs as well. When people voice their concerns to me about like situations I always remind them that there is no way they could save another if they were drowning themselves. Just as the first rule of First Aid is to ensure one’s own safety first, this should also apply to the world of work. When things get bad, I totally understand if workers take industrial action, such as the junior doctors in England recently did. I know in situations like this the gutter press has a field day, but in that particular situation, I was clear in my mind that any blood would have been on the hands of Jeremy Hunt and the dreadful Tory Party.
I was bullied by housing officer he tried to get me out.over surrport.just cause I’m independent. I have entail heath learning disability. He said he gives section 21 said he makes homeless nasty.cunt. I know he could not as went to cab. That housing association. I live in surrpoted housing. Most people.with disability get bullied even by coverment. As my rent paid. Don’t cause auntie social behaviour. He can not evite me
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Absolutely appalling behaviour from jobsworths who are now expected to treat claimants with disdain.
The Tory hatred of welfare recipients has permeated through to all levels of service now, helped by 6 years of disgusting rhetoric from the Right wing media.
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I have been a ‘Camden Benefits Service service-user’ now for over 32 years now, from 1 April 1984. That 32 years has given me a perspective into Camden Benefits Service treatment of claimants that goes against the theme of blaming ‘Tory austerity’.
When I moved in, I was kept waiting more than five weeks for first HB payment after having paid my first month’s rent in advance. After exhausting borrowed money I went into the Housing Benefits offices to see what was holding up their processing of my claim and was told that they were basically in meltdown, having to process the Finance Dept’s end-of-financial year figures at the same time while being under-resourced. The over-riding message that spoke louder than their meltdown matter was that they seemed to be saying that they had far more important things to deal with than my individual concerns. As a politically active Labour Party member at the time I took the matter to my ward cllr who subsequently told me that their Housing Benefits Service had told me that I could get an emergency payment but I declined it. I could not recall their saying that to me; they might have done, but the essential thing was that I was left feeling that I was being treated like dirt.
The golden motto of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is, “Never attend anywhere official alone.” Had I been so supported on my first visit to Camden Benefits I would have had both a witness to my rights giving me a more positive feeling on leaving the building, and another opinion regarding what I was being offered. When I got my HB money coming in, the trauma of that episode led me more to thinking of throwing myself on the tracks while waiting on the underground platforms, and it certainly weakened my Labour Party membership as I soon joined what was then the Ecology Party.
In later years, the threat language of their standard letters demanding information has been standard for as long as I can recall, and they once took some sort of additional hostile action when my response delivered through their own town hall letter box went missing over the Christmas period! My subsequent methods of responding have been to:
a) hand deliver my written responses to their office reception and get date stamped copy for myself. (It’s a waste of time waiting for appointment, and lack of sound insulation in their interview booths is degrading intrusion on privacy.)
b) since home e-mail ability: send electronic copy to their e-mail address, copying in a ward councillor or two.
Yet I have heard of worse in other boroughs, esp. Islington though that may well be different now. On self-employment training based in Islington in the early noughties, we were told officially that several of the London Borough of Islington-based trainees had trouble with HB because Islington outsourced HB to a corrupt private company.
LB Brent-focused blogger Martin Francis replies to a comment I placed on his blog post that Brent Council set to increase Council Tax by 3.99%, make cuts and increase charges [without even thinking about consulting toward 100% Council Tax Reduction for those too poor to be taxed:
“… I would be interested to hear from Brent residents about any letters they have received from the Council, DWP etc with a similar bullying tone.”
The ‘anon’ tag is frequently used on his blog.
Going back to the title of this blog post, perhaps it should be extended in this sort of fashion:
Authorities bully benefit claimants because they can. Or is it because…
• The wider public are not aware of how the ‘legitimate authorities’ conduct ‘business as usual’ with Weapons of Mass Destruction standard text in form letters?
• When ‘legitimate authorities’ consult — if they do consult — about the supposed wonders of automating procedures with digital technology, they do not consult about what ‘standard texts’ to use and when?
• Central and local government ‘key decision makers’ listen to their private sector, outsourcing friends — especially when wined and dined — rather than poor people?
• ….
😉
Camden council when I told them I just had two heart attack in three weeks.They went to court with no warning and got Liability order against me for £235 for a flat I lived in may 2015.
I left the flat after 6 month contract but they want me to pay the whole year.