Author Archives: Kate B

DWP: We can’t attend a public meeting on a jobcentre closure because the meeting is public. BOLLOCKS.

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A total classic from the DWP:

Last night, I attended a public meeting in Clay Cross about the DWP’s plans to close the Clay Cross jobcentre.

On arrival, the Derbyshire Unemployed Workers’ Centres people said that the DWP’s Midland Shires district manager had pulled out of an invitation to attend the meeting.

I was intrigued to hear this. Everyone was.

The DWP’s explanation for this non-attendance seemed to be that the meeting had been tweeted as public and public attendance at the meeting had actually been encouraged. Public = Bad. In an email to the DUWC organisers, the DWP said that they couldn’t come, because the district manager’s attendance at a public meeting would “break the consultation conventions.”

You may be wondering what the hell that means. Here’s a bit more detail (I trust I have this straight in my head):

The DWP’s jobcentre closure plans had been open to a public consultation earlier this year. That consultation is apparently now closed. The DWP doesn’t attend public meetings after a consultation is closed, because that is Wrong. Or breaks “consultation conventions.” Or is Against Protocol. Or something. I did try to find out this morning – an investigation that didn’t go too well. After an arsey conversation with the DWP (see below), the DWP emailed me to say that the district manager in question had originally agreed to attend the meeting because the DWP thought the meeting was private. The DWP pulled out when they found out it wasn’t. I can’t say that admission actually helps the DWP’s case if we are talking about transparency, openness and readiness to meet with service users, which we are. They think it does for some reason.

What I can say is that people at the meeting weren’t impressed. It sounded very much like the DWP didn’t want to attend a meeting that might a) include actual pissed-off service users who were angry about their jobcentre being closed and b) end up as a matter of public record.

What? said people when the DWP’s non-attendance was announced.

“Unfortunately,” DWP Midland Shires said in its email on the topic to DUWC, “due to the fact that the meeting on 16 March has been “tweeted” (sic) as a public meeting and attendance encouraged, to that end we have been advised by our policy team that it’s not appropriate for him [the district manager] to attend as this would break the consultation conventions.”

I am not afraid to reveal that this kind of shit really hurts my head. The DWP couldn’t come to a public meeting because that public meeting was public. The fact that the public had been encouraged to attend this public meeting might make the meeting even more public. This last being the case, the DWP needed to keep further away. Consultation conventions (whatever they are – the DWP didn’t quite touch on these in its response to me) aside, the district manager could, surely, have attended as a show of goodwill at the very least. Or as a show of responsibility, even. The closure proposal has the district manager’s name on it. At the very least, someone from that office could stand up and answer to it. In public, etc. But no. The public meeting was too public.

Do go on, I thought.

The email did.

Continue reading →

Homeless and placed in a neighbourhood where people think you’re a nark

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More life and political views from people who must rely on benefits:

Posted below is a transcript of a recorded interview made recently with Michael (named changed on request). Michael is in his mid-50s. We made this recording at a foodbank and kitchen lunch in the Manchester area in February (Michael asked for his details to be kept anonymous).

Most weeks, I spend several hours at foodbanks and kitchen lunches recording interviews with people who rely exclusively on benefits. In the mainstream press and politics, we hear a lot about Just About Managing Families and the Squeezed Middle, and other groups that have some political clout. We hear less from people who are marginalised and considered irrelevant. That’s a pity, because people who are considered irrelevant have a lot of relevant experiences, particularly when it comes to dealing first-hand with fallout from welfare reform. We talk about everything at our meetings: homelessness, housing, money, work, politics, Brexit, drug and alcohol addiction, mental health, family and the DWP.

Michael talked about most of those things.

He was particularly concerned about his living arrangements.

Michael had recently been street homeless. He’d even stayed on the floor of his local church for a time. A few months ago, he was placed in a flat on an estate by his local homelessness office. He liked the flat, but wanted to move. He wanted to get away from another drinker on the estate. He said that his neighbours bullied him, because they thought he was a nark.

Michael said people thought this because he spent a lot of time in the company of a copper. (I wasn’t sure if Michael meant a copper, or a community support officer, or another sort of volunteer. People deal with countless agencies and support workers. Wires get crossed). There may have been other problems, but Michael didn’t volunteer them. He said the policeman worked with a local community partnership. This support worker sometimes took Michael to benefits assessments and GP appointments. He helped Michael fill in benefit application forms.

Michael received Employment and Support Allowance. He’d had a serious heart attack a couple of years ago. Michael said that money was tight. He couldn’t afford to run the heating at his flat for more than half-an-hour a day. He wore many layers of clothing on the day that we met: a shirt, several sweatshirts and his coat. The clothes were dirty. He said he wore the clothes to bed for the warmth.

Michael was informed and eloquent. He read the papers. He said he had a degree and had worked in different parts of the world in well-paid professions. He’d lived in Asia for years and knew a great deal about different countries there. He’d also had a serious drink problem for years. In recent times, the booze had caught up with him, as it does when people reach 40 or 50. The pancreas goes, the liver goes, the heart goes, the balance goes and the mental health goes. The money’s gone. People talk a lot about things they did and things they say they did. Michael was still drinking. He looked unwell. His face was pale and pouchy, and his hands trembled. He held them out to show me. He looked sick with hangover and he probably was. It was good to know that he was at least housed and had some money coming in. Alcohol is such a wrecker. There’s nothing much left at the end.

We talked about the booze, Michael’s heart attack and his homelessness, government, Brexit (“the most unfortunate thing is that David Cameron ended… George Osborne…they were rebuilding the economy, doing a fantastic job,”) and his fears for his safety in the neighbourhood he’d been placed in. Being pegged as a nark weighed heavily on Michael’s mind.

This is the story that Michael told. This is the sort of conversation I have with someone every week or so. Michael began by talking about the way his relationship with the copper had come about:

“When I went to hospital [for a recent appointment, because of Michael’s health problems after his heart attack] – they’ve got a new community support team there. You’ve got the housing company, the health people, [the] council and the police. They all work together in a team in this unit.

A policeman is my designated support worker. He’s plainclothes CID, quite senior, but he’s a really nice bloke and we’re good friends now. He is my personal support worker. [He] give me lifts in his car – makes sure I get to the hospital and dentist’s, and things like that… [he] helps me with all my paperwork. Without him, I’d be absolutely lost.

The trouble with it is because I’ve only been there [living in the flat he was placed in by the local housing office] for six months, I’m seen as a relative newcomer… The people who have lived as residents for many years there really dislike the police, so they see me as some sort of police informant. They don’t get it that when he’s [the policeman] is working at that hub, he’s not being a policeman. He’s not being a copper on duty. He’s actually working as part of the community team.

What they’re trying to do [with that team] is instead of the people going to the authorities, the authorities go to the local villages to support the people with all kinds of issues – health, financial, gas, heating, hate crime. They’re there to support…not to go around arresting people, or hindering people. But the local residents just don’t get that this guy is supporting me…

People have made lots and lots of threats. [I’ve] been hit a couple of times… I live there on my own. I’ve got no backup at all. My mother and father are dead. The only friends I’ve got are in London… plus, I’ve got a degree, so they see me as some sort of pseudo-intellectual… foreign… outside that’s come in working in conjunction with the police and knocking at their world. Which I’m not.

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More recordings: intentionally homeless if you’re evicted for benefit cap rent arrears…?

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More food for thought from conversations about the benefit cap at the actual coal face:

I’ve posted below a recording in which a Basildon council officer says that people who are evicted because of benefit cap rent arrears could be found to have made themselves intentionally homeless.

Which was not the best news. Council help for you is very much reduced if you’re judged responsible for your homelessness. You’re more or less on your own with your homelessness problems if that happens as I’ve seen it. You would have thought that people evicted on account of rent arrears caused by the benefit cap should and would be cut slack in this area – particularly if they were placed in housing that they could afford before the benefit cap was lowered – but maybe not.

Certainly, officers make interesting remarks on the ground. It’s all important to note:

The recording below was made at a February meeting with a woman who has serious rent arrears because of the recently-lowered benefit cap. The woman and her three young children were placed in a Basildon flat by Newham council. Basildon council handles the family’s housing benefit claim. This woman’s housing benefit was cut by about £100 a week when the cap was lowered at the end of last year. A small discretionary housing payment covers part of her rent shortfall until the end of March. We went to Basildon council to ask what else she could do.

The officer said the woman should go back to Newham council to ask if Newham thought her flat was still affordable now that her housing benefit had been cut.

The officer then said intentional homelessness was on the cards if this woman was evicted because of benefit cap arrears:

(This audio has been altered to disguise voices. Am not particularly in pursuit of individual officers here. It’s the message that’s the issue).

“If you become homeless, it could be that you’d be seen as intentionally homeless anyway, because you… if you’ve been evicted for rent arrears, then it is through non-payment of rent that you’ve lost your property.

That got my attention, all right. In the recording, you hear me ask:

“Would that mean no one would have a duty to house her? Is that the case, even when [the rent arrears have been caused by] something like that [benefit] cap that’s come in subsequently….?”

“This is why you need to see Newham council about the affordability, because if they say it is affordable, then you’re going to have to struggle by and get it paid…” the officer said. “If they don’t think it’s affordable, then because they have a duty, they have a duty to assist you to find something cheaper, or…”

Or what? I thought.

I contacted Newham council to ask whether or not the council was likely to decide that people had made themselves homeless intentionally if they were evicted because of rent arrears caused by the benefit cap. Unfortunately, the council did not respond. Think I must still be on their blacklist (we apparently fell out over my Focus E15 stories. Do they hold a grudge or what). If anyone else can get an answer out of them, by all means let me know. It would be good to have that peg in the ground for future reference.

Anyway. Official positions don’t always matter when you get down to it. This is the sort of thing you hear on the ground. Putting it all out there.

Many thanks to @nearlylegal for help with benefit cap questions over the past while.

The very personal information you must give in public if you need state help

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A short post on the state and petty humiliations:

Posted below is a list of questions taken from a recorded conversation between a woman affected by the recently-lowered benefit cap and a Basildon council housing options officer last week.

This woman is already in significant rent arrears because of the lowered cap. She went to Basildon council to ask what would happen if she couldn’t pay the arrears (the answers, which you probably can guess already, are at the end of this post). I went with her.

Basildon has an open-plan public services hub: council services, the library and the jobcentre all in one enormous ground-floor room. Security guards roam the place. You take a ticket and wait for your number to come up on a computer screen.

“There’s no privacy,” the woman I was with said when we got there.

She was right. There wasn’t. There were a few private rooms off to the side here and there, but you weren’t invited to use one. There were open cubicles all over the place across the floor. You could hear absolutely everything that was going on in the ones around you. At one point, we sat next to a guy who was explaining to an officer why he was struggling to pay his council tax. We might as well have been attending his appointment with him. We could hear every single word that he said. Continue reading →

AGES on hold with the DWP…

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Because I like to log these things…

Called the DWP’s 0345 608 8545 benefits number last Thursday afternoon on behalf of a man who was worried about his benefit payment not being made.

Spent the best part of half an hour working through the options and then on hold while waiting to talk to someone. The whole call took about 45 minutes (43 minutes and 23 seconds to be precise). I’m pretty sure the DWP’s 0345 numbers cost on some phone plans.

This sort of waiting time won’t be news to anyone who regularly uses these systems. I like to note these waiting times for people who don’t regularly use these systems, so they can get a feel for some of the reasons why many people are angry and frustrated. It can be the little things, you know. They add up and add up.

Update:

Bit of maths on the topic by the excellent @StopCityAirport

It would be interesting to know how much people find themselves paying. A fiver is a lot to people – especially people who are ringing the DWP to find out why their benefit money hasn’t been paid in.

Look at the state of this flat. Here is independence vs neglect in austerity

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These recent photos show the mould and mess in a one-room Haringey flat that is occupied by a man his mid-50s (I’m withholding his real name in this story).

This man has learning difficulties. He also has diabetes, which he struggles to manage, and is in poor health. These photos were sent to me recently. I visited this flat a number of times a while back and have known this guy for several years. His living conditions are usually atrocious.

He is about to be evicted from this flat, because it is in such an appalling state. He received a court notice last Thursday. He brought the notice in to show members of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group at their Thursday afternoon meeting (he also had other photos of the mould in the flat, which he showed us).

Some history:

This man lived with his mother until she died over a decade ago. While his mother was alive, he always had work as a general and kitchen assistant in hotels and kitchens.

This man was made redundant from his last job about nine years ago. He signed on for jobseekers’ allowance and has been put through the DWP’s usual Work Choice/Work Programme mill, with no results whatsoever. He has not found work again. His health has deteriorated to the point where he needs to apply for Employment and Support Allowance. Members of the Kilburn group are helping him with his forms.

Since his mother died, housing has been a major challenge for this man.

So.

There are two main problems for people in this sort of situation.

The first is accommodation itself – finding places in the private sector which people can afford to rent when they rely primarily on housing benefit. Continue reading →

Benefit cap arrears and eviction threats for women and children. Already.

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Another short post on impossible situations:

Here’s a rent arrears demand recently received by a woman who lives in a Basildon flat with her three young children (the arrears have increased since she received this letter).

It appears these arrears have come about because of the recently-lowered benefit cap.

This woman’s benefits exceeded the Out of Greater London limit of £384.62 by about £100 a week. As a result, at the end of last year, her housing benefit was cut by about £100 a week from about £188 a week to to £87 a week (think the sums are correct, looking at the paperwork. Give me a shout if you think the totals need looking at. Maths problems with these things are not at all uncommon).

Basildon council recently gave this woman a discretionary housing payment of £20 a week to cover some of the rent shortfall. That helps a bit, but only a bit. She only gets the DHP for the short term, too. After that, she either finds the full whack each week, or moves house again (this time with a serious arrears history) and takes the kids out of school again (she was recently in temporary accommodation in another borough)… or she ultimately gets evicted, I guess:

“I don’t know what to do,” she says.

I don’t really know what to do either, if I’m honest. Which is not particularly helpful.

What I do know is that I spend an awful lot of time these days with people in different parts of the country who show me demands for rent money they can’t pay and/or which say court and eviction are on the cards. As I write this, an email about a looming eviction in Haringey has landed in my inbox. I go to foodbanks and foodbank-lunches and inevitably end up talking to at least one person who is clutching a folder of letters about rent arrears.

Continue reading →

More views outside the bubble: Hating the government, hating the left, and liking Brexit

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Another perspective from outside Zone 1:

Posted below is a transcript from a recorded interview with Paul, 47. This interview was recorded in mid-January in Oldham.

This is a story about resentment. On one level or another, a lot of the interviews on this site are. I speak mainly with people who rely on social security systems. They have not thrived as attitudes towards people who receive benefits have hardened. You find a blistering anger a lot of the time. People say they resent government. They resent being patronised by the officers they must deal with in the social services bureaucracies they must use. They resent people who they perceive as activists, do-gooders and meddlers. They resent, poisonously, their lack of power over any of these things. As you would.

So. Anger.

Paul said he was on Incapacity Benefit (the benefit may have been the Employment and Support Allowance). He lives in a housing association flat in Ashton. He said he worked as a painter and decorator when he was younger. He receives his benefit for stress, anxiety and depression.

Paul doesn’t vote in general elections, but he did vote in the EU referendum. He voted Leave. He voted Leave, because he wants “proper border control… because [what we have ], it’s non-effective… I voted Brexit, because it is not about fundamentalism. It’s about not wanting to be taken over. It’s about the fear of being taken over, of being a foreigner in your own land…I feel a foreigner in my own land. Ridiculous, isn’t it…it’s a league of nations here.”

Paul resents this government – “the prime minister. She doesn’t live in the real world.” He dislikes the “patronising” left – “they have just bought into this philosophy – of all feel sorry for us.” He is angry about benefit sanctions and at people being forced to steal when their benefits are stopped – “it’s a shame that [people] have to burgle, because most of them have been sanctioned.”

I post this conversation, because it is one of many that I and others have with people on similar themes. I also post it because the views of people who rely entirely on benefits at this point in history should be recorded and heard. There’s a great deal of talk in the mainstream about (politically useful) Jams and Squeezed Middles and the rest, but I feel that we hear less from people who must exist completely in the system and who are not thought relevant because they don’t always vote, they don’t make money and they’ve been thoroughly dismissed as scroungers.

I often think there’s a feeling out there that if you ignore people who are already marginalised, they’ll ultimately go away. Actually, people don’t go away. They get angry:

“Leftwing liberalists, liberalism,” Paul said when I asked him what he thought was wrong with the world. “They have just bought into this philosophy – of all feel sorry for us…they buy into this philosophy of – “Oh, show a real caring heart, because they like to. They’re hell bent on patronising people, these liberal lefties. They don’t just want to patronise us. They want to patronise the foreigners as well.”

and:

“…the prime minister. She doesn’t live in the real world. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown [and] when it was a coalition – Clegg. He’s another one.”

I’d say this, too, just by the way. Stand Up To Trump coalitions and Pro-Europe marches can seem a very long way away when making and transcribing these interviews. That’s not to say Trump and Brexit should not be stood up to. They should be stood up to. It is simply to say that when you’re out and about, campaigns you see discussed all-out on Facebook seem a long way away.

We recorded the interview below in January at an Ark voluntary action lunch in Oldham. The Ark group puts on a free meal at the Salt Cellar each Tuesday. There’s the food, prayers, sometimes a bible reading, a thought of the day, music and, in the middle of the room, a popular pool table. People who are dealing with addiction, homelessness and other issues attend. It’s a social place. Paul travels to the Salt Cellar from Ashton each week by bus to meet and chat with others. I go along every few weeks to record interviews. People give their views on topics such as politics, benefits, sanctions, Brexit, immigration, work, housing, religion and sport.

Here’s Paul, 47, on 17 January 2017 at the Salt Cellar with his perspectives:

“[The big problem today] is leftwing liberalists, liberalism…. They have just bought into this philosophy – of all feel sorry for us. Feel sorry for us… gone too soft… [They] buy into this philosophy of, “Oh, show a real caring heart,” because they like to… they’re hell bent on patronising people, these liberal lefties. They don’t just want to patronise us. They want to patronise the foreigners as well. They are hell bent on patronising foreigners, because that’s how they get off. Their egos. It’s their personal own private egos, because they’re on an ego trip.

How does [the left] patronise?

Paul imitates. [Lefties say] “Oh, what a shame, isn’t it, I feel sorry for them [poor people], but we’ve got to keep in with the church, haven’t we. We got to create jobs for these people who are in these foodbanks. We’ve got to be seen to be doing something” – when really, it’s that personal fucking ego that’s driving all that. You know what I mean – sort of, “let’s integrate everybody into this big bubble.”

What does England need to do now? What are the problems?

Proper border control, because it’s non-effective [as it stands]. Continue reading →

Councils, housing associations and the DWP are crushing people with debt

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While Brexit and Trump hoover resources and headlines, the state and so-called social landlords continue to get away with screwing people into the ground:

Last week, I spent several hours at the South Chadderton foodbank in Oldham speaking with people who’d come in for groceries.

We talked about the reasons why people needed to use the foodbank.

One explanation in particular came up, as it does a lot: Debt repayment plans are leaving people with no money.

People on benefits and low incomes are repaying arrears or loans money to councils, housing associations, the DWP, bailiffs and god knows who else – but they can’t afford it. The loss of the fivers and tenners that authorities deduct in repayments make a tolerable life impossible. People certainly don’t have the hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of pounds that are really needed to shift these debts. Simple equation, when you look at it. Debts grow and penalties grow, but income does not.

Still, we have these repayment plans.

At South Chadderton, I talked for a long while with a young guy called Neil (name changed. There’s a transcript from the interview we recorded at the end of this post).

Neil needed a food parcel, because Oldham’s First Choice Homes housing association and the DWP were taking cuts from Neil’s benefit for rent arrears and loan repayments. Other authorities were queuing up for a share: Neil had been summonsed to court for council tax arrears. Neil couldn’t afford the repayments, but he had to pay all the same. You’ll see from the letter above that First Choice Homes is taking £30 a fortnight for rent arrears (out of a benefit total of about £130).

Neil said that talking to the housing association was hopeless (I offered to make a call).

“They say the lowest they can go is £30…they’re on the phone, going on with themselves.. I said, “hang on a minute.” They said, “can you make a payment now?” I said, “I’ve got nothing to give you.” (I’ve had plenty of similar conversations where I’ve tried, fruitlessly, to convince organisations to go easy because people can’t meet their debts).

It should come as no surprise that Neil was recently done for theft. He did a stretch last year for theft by finding – “[it was] a load of slates in the alley. They’d been there for two year.” This sort of story is very common indeed. I’ve met a number of guys in the area now who’ve been in and out of jail in recent times. (Two out of the three people I spoke to at the foodbank last week had done time).

The problem is life when people get out. Neil lost his housing benefit while he was in prison. He ended up with rent arrears. That total has gone up again, because he didn’t make repayments over Christmas and New Year. Neil decided to keep hold of his benefit money instead. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, etc. I’d take the same view myself. Neil couldn’t stand another call with the council or the housing association on the topic. I find this all the time these days as well. Every contact with the bureaucracy is a bitter fight. People don’t even want to talk to an officer to ask if calculation mistakes have been made, or to question sums they don’t understand, or if letters are correct, or if there are other options for help.

Continue reading →

Can’t use a computer, or read or write very well? Tough. No benefits for you.

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A few thoughts on Damian Hinds’ claims that jobcentres aren’t needed because more and more people claim benefits online, because I feel like having a rant on this one.

This line from government – “people don’t need face-to-face services because they can easily access benefits on the internet,” makes me absolutely furious. It is deceitful. Very.

The truth is there’s a whole group of people who can’t – and so don’t – use computers at all. They are entirely unable to make or manage online accounts of any description. They find completing online forms impossible. In my direct experience, quite a few people struggle to read and write as well.

I am constantly struck by the number of people I meet in the course of my work who have serious literacy difficulties. We all know the problem exists, but it is still unsettling when you experience the real-life extent of it. I’m better at picking up on this than I was. Some people tell you about their about their literacy struggles directly. Others speak about the problem in a sort of code. People will ask you to read and/or fill in forms for them – they’ll speak while you write. Others will say that they can’t fill in a form, or look a webpage right then, because they forgot to bring their glasses. That happens quite a lot. You start to get the drift when you meet with people on different occasions and realise they say the same sort of thing every time.

One thing is for sure – you have a much-reduced chance of claiming benefits online, or managing a web-based jobsearch if you struggle to read, write, or use a computer and have nobody to ask for assistance.

God knows I’ve seen that plenty of times. Readers of this site will know that I’ve documented people’s computer and written literacy problems in the past few years as they’ve tried to make benefit claims, or carry out the DWP’s exacting jobsearch requirements online.

Filling in job applications can be challenging enough. Here’s a Morrison’s job application form filled in by Eddie*, a man in his 50s with learning and literacy difficulties who worked as a kitchen assistant for years and wanted another job, but was not likely to find one given his age and declining health. I wrote the words Eddie wanted in his application on my notepad. He wrote them on the application form like this:

Continue reading →