Category Archives: Welfare reform

You won’t get PIP because you failed to attend a face-to-face assessment you didn’t know about. What.

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Be interested to hear if this has happened to others:

I’m working at the moment with a man whose Disability Living Allowance was stopped in April this year.

He applied for Personal Independence Payment, but says he never received a letter or a text to tell him when his face-to-face assessment for PIP would be.

What he did receive a couple of months later was a letter to tell him that he wouldn’t get PIP because he didn’t attend the face-to-face meeting. As he says – he didn’t attend the face-to-face assessment because he didn’t realise that it was on. He didn’t get a letter or a text telling him where and when it would be.

So he applied again. A time and date for a face-to-face assessment was set up for last Friday. I was going to attend the assessment with him. Unfortunately, that assessment was cancelled at the last minute, because the assessor called in sick.

Two people have told me that they’ve recently had this experience. They received a letter advising them that they wouldn’t get PIP because they didn’t attend a face-to-face assessment – a face-to-face assessment that they say they were never told about. In these cases, the part of the comms which tells people they’re not eligible for PIP seemed to work better than the part which tells people when and where to show up for eligibility tests.

It seems unlikely that either person simply chose not to attend. Applying for PIP is a form-filling nightmare. I doubt very much that anyone would go through all that and then not attend the face-to-face assessment when given a date and then apply for PIP again for the lulz.

Has anyone else out there had a similar experience? If you have and don’t want to leave details in the comments, feel free to contact me here.

Am also interested to hear from people who had their face-to-face assessments cancelled at the last minute.

Making people wait for PIP assessments and payments really is rubbish

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Was meant to go to a PIP assessment with someone this morning.

The assessment was cancelled at the last minute because the assessor called in sick. Guy I was going with has to wait another fortnight now for another assessment appointment. He hasn’t had any DLA or PIP money since April due to one stuff-up after another.

On it goes. Or doesn’t go, I should say. While Brexit and party-political shenanigans suck up headlines, attention and resources, real life for real people who must use public services, benefits and support systems continues to be something of a challenge.

Q: Should there be limits on the number of times people can use foodbanks, or get help? Answer: No.

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I was speaking to a man called Pat McCullough, 67, at the Ark lunch kitchen at the Salt Cellar in Oldham yesterday.

Pat raised an issue that comes up a lot – the limit on the number of times in six months, or in a set time, that people can visit a foodbank for food parcels and/or get fuel voucher topups.

Pat’s fuel cards with no credit on them earlier this year

Pat, who is ex-army and having problems with money because his pension credit stopped for reasons that various people are trying to get to the bottom of, said that he’d reached his limit of three foodbank visits in six months.

Everyone I talk to who attends foodbanks here quotes the “three visits in a set time limit,” rule, often without prompting. People certainly see the “three visits” line as a policy, not as a useful flag.

Some places enforce these limits more strictly than others. You get good people and you get strict people, and you get confusion. There are also a number of different places that hand food out. Some require vouchers. Some don’t.

Pat said he’d had four foodbank referrals of late. He’d also had a couple of fuel topup vouchers, but didn’t think he’d be eligible for more for a time. He said he was using emergency credit for his electricity and gas cards at the moment.

Pat is a regular at the Tuesday lunches. I’ve written about his problems with paying for fuel before. Which brings me to the central point of this post in a roundabout way: There are a lot of people out there who I see again and again, and whose circumstances never really change. That being the case, why have limits and rules at all?

The real problem people have is that they are permanently stuck. They are permanently stuck without money. That’s the issue. They’ll never have the money that they need to get completely free and clear. A few quid here and there won’t change things.

That’s why “popular” concepts such as compulsory Debt Advice or Money Management lessons for people who apply for council or charity support always have me sighing very loudly. I wonder if we really get anywhere with any of that – a debt management person telling an impoverished person that they might be able to repay a few pounds each week on a massive court fine or whatever if they spend two quid less, say, on chips. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So what if people spend a few quid on booze, or fags, or a hamburger, or whatever. So what if some debt management worthy tells people off for spending that money. It doesn’t matter a damn when you look at the real equations. A handful of change doesn’t make an impact on the big sums and debts at all. Continue reading →

How can the DWP STILL leave people to “live” on a pittance? Will any of this ever change?

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Let’s start the week with a rant:

I’ve said this a million times, as has everyone, but let’s say it again:

Some people don’t have enough money to live on. Nothing is changing that I can see.

People are deliberately kept in debt to the state and in crushing poverty as a result. The DWP sanctions and reduces benefit money to the point where people can’t meet basic bills, and then deducts even more for loans and that people can’t pay. People are forced to cough up fines and costs for court appearances for unpaid council tax and rent – bills that they couldn’t afford to pay in the first place. That’s why they’re in court. Something needs to be done, but it isn’t being done. I wonder exactly how long the turning-point will sit on the horizon. How long will people be forced to wait for change?

We’ve had plenty of chat recently in the MSM re: politicians accepting that austerity is terrible and that people loathe it. I’m all for that chat, but a timeline for actual improvement would be good. I realise that we’ve had major political movement in recent times, from Brexit to the Christ-ly rise of Jez, and I try to get/stay enthused/interested, but the truth is that useful results on the ground still feel a very long way away.

I still speak to people who didn’t vote in the general election. They still shrug and say, “it doesn’t make any difference.” You see their point. They’re still at foodbanks. They’re still fighting the DWP for a few quid in hardship funds. They’re still written off as scroungers. Recent political events haven’t meant much in real terms for them.

After squandering months on an election and its aftermath, our “leadership” and parliament will soon take summer break. I wonder if a break should be allowed. Then again – who cares. What’s a couple of months in the greater scheme. Even if Jez launches the glorious revolution tomorrow, it’ll take years – decades – to rebuild public services to the point where people who really need those services get them in a way that feels helpful. A revolution would look great on facebook, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for the rest. I realise that I take a childishly simple view of political realities here, but I feel the need to get down to basics. A lot of people have been waiting an awful long time for the aforementioned turning-point to really arrive. Quite a few people have died along the way.

Some specifics from real life out and about:

There are three key problems I hear again and again from people as I go from foodbanks to lunch kitchens to meetings with people who have housing problems:

1) The DWP, councils and housing associations are deducting money from people’s benefits by way of sanctions, loan repayments, council tax and fines, and rent arrears. The upshot is that people are left with a pittance to live on. It’s not uncommon to hear people talk about a figure of £50 a week and less. Doesn’t matter whether or not you think people deserve these slapdowns because they’re single mums, unemployed, low earners, ex-cons, or whatever. They’re stuck forever. The state and its offshoots crush people with debts that they’ll never repay. The state does not help these people. It owns them. We, or someone, needs concrete plans to change that.

2) People are waiting for an Employment and Support Allowance decision, or a Personal Independence Payment decision. The waiting is going on and on and/or their application is turned down. The mandatory reconsideration and tribunal appeals processes drag on and are extremely difficult to navigate if you can’t grasp complex government bureaucracies. Which many people can’t, because these systems are too hard to deal with even if you do feel up to it. At the moment, in one way or another, I’m dealing with/writing about three people with learning difficulties and health problems who have been found fit for work this year and have not been able to appeal these decisions, or sort out interim income, without help from local support groups.

3) People are fighting eviction and paying big court/bailiffs costs on the way. They’re always insecurely housed, because they must rent in the private sector.

Here are three very recent examples of these:

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DHPs are a stopgap. They don’t fix the real housing problems. The whole system is wrecked

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A few thoughts on the government’s disingenuous guidance to *help* Grenfell residents with housing costs by providing Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs):

On Friday morning on twitter, some of us were discussing this DWP memo on getting DHPs to Grenfell residents. (This was hours before the Guardian finally picked up on the memo and ran a let’s-brown-nose-the-government-by-putting-the-government-defence-up-front story on it. That story didn’t offer an interview with anyone who had actually gone through the often-invasive and thankless process of applying for a DHP. Don’t start me on that. I’m not in the mood).

Anyway.

The memo told councils to prioritise Grenfell residents who applied for Discretionary Housing Payments for help with rent in advance, deposits on new homes and rent shortfalls in new homes. This memo made me furious, for many reasons.

One is, of course, that people who survived the Grenfell fire should not have to apply for anything at all, through any of these council processes. Deposits and full rents should be paid on the homes of their choice for the rest of their lives. I genuinely think that. I can’t see why people wouldn’t think that.

Another reason for disliking this government memo “initiative” is that DHPs are only stopgap payments. They are short-term payments made by councils from a government allocation. They are used to cover housing-cost problems for people on housing benefit, or the housing component of Universal Credit – say, a rent deposit for a flat for someone on a low income, or the bedroom tax, or a shortfall between the amount of housing benefit people can get and their full rent, particularly when people must rent in the expensive private sector. (I’ve helped people apply for DHPs).

DHPs do NOT change the welfare reform policies and issues that cause the problems in the first place – the bedroom tax, local housing allowance caps, benefit caps, the fact that homeless people must be placed in the expensive private rental sector because there’s not enough social housing to go around, and the fact that everyone who rents privately is exposed to runaway private-sector rents. Those problems go on – seemingly forever, at the moment. They’re not changed by DHP allocations. The DWP memo on DHPs made clear Grenfell people remain subject to welfare reforms such as the benefit cap.

It’s the short-termism of DHP help that really gets my back up. Covering payments and problems such as deposit and rent shortfalls with DHPs is a real get-out for government and councils. It means that the government via councils can use DHPs to mask housing and rent problems caused by the high rents, the discharging of homelessness duties into the private sector and welfare reform for six months, or a year, or, to put it crassly in this case, until mainstream press attention moves away from Grenfell and people are left alone to battle council and DWP bureaucracies. DHPs don’t address reasons for a housing crisis at all.

There’s another problem, too – one that isn’t discussed as often as it should be. People (I mean a lot of the mainstream media here) seem to assume that the bureaucratic systems that people must use to apply for DHPs, housing, housing benefit and the UC housing component function reasonably well, or even at all – ie, that there’s an operational system in place for people who are homeless and/or who need housing benefit and DHPs and so on. The truth is that these systems are in absolute shambles. I realise that government says rules should be relaxed for Grenfell residents and every effort made to assist people. I’m saying that I have no confidence in this being the case in an ongoing way. That’s because wherever you go in the country, things are so often an unbelievable mess. I can’t tell you how often I’ve gone to housing meetings, or jobcentre meetings, or whatever, with people, and come out with nothing resolved. This needs to be addressed in councils and bureaucracies all over. These problems apply all round.

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If austerity really is over (ha), everyone must benefit. That includes people we’ve been told to hate.

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Have been thinking about the much-discussed end to austerity and public sector cuts ever since the politically-resuscitated (regurgitated?) Michael Gove floated the concept: “we…. need to take account of legitimate public concerns about ensuring that we properly fund public services,” blah, blah, etc.

An end to austerity would be tremendous, of course. Can’t wait, etc. I only hope that EVERYONE gets to share in the largesse. The time has come to throw out poisonous notions of Deserving and Undeserving poor. God knows that’s achieved nothing apart from division. Everyone is deserving and must be seen as such. When I say “everyone,” I mean even people who successive governments have made very sure are unpopular with taxpayers. “Everyone” must include the people that the Daily Mail et al like to dismiss as dead weight – the single mums, the people with drug and alcohol problems and people who don’t, for whatever reason, work (or vote). I tend to feel that when the political class talks about righting austerity’s wrongs, the recurring themes are stagnant pay, and funding the NHS, the police, social care, education and housing. Fair enough. Those services are vital.

There are other people, though. There are people whose lives have been wrecked by public sector cuts – particularly because the DWP and council frontline services they must use have been outsourced, reorganised, and/or cut past function – but who are less electorally pertinent than, say, nurses and the police. These are the people who have been abandoned to our era’s most spectacularly callous and defective bureaucracies. These are people who are judged harshly for their circumstances and often left with nothing to live on as a result. I trust our new wave of Tory austerity-relaxers will throw them a lifeline as well. Bit more carrot and less stick, and all that.

It is with this in mind that I take you towards Oldham now, to the South Chadderton foodbank where I spent several hours last week. I talked there with people who’d come in for food parcels because they’d run out of money.

I spoke with two women at length. One woman had lost income through benefit sanctions. The other had no income, because she’d failed a sickness benefit assessment, was mired in appeals and had no idea what to do next. Both women were having a hell of a time trying to make sense of the endless letters, cut income and confusing instructions that people are given by the DWP in our punitive and unhelpful austerity age. These people could have been anyone, really, in the sense that I see this confusion and incomprehension all the time.

The first woman was a young mum called Emma.

Emma was 31. She had three kids aged 13, five and six months. She told me a story I’ve heard variations on before. Emma said that her Income Support payments had been reduced, because she’d missed two work-related interviews at her jobcentre. I found out later that these interviews may not even have been mandatory. This sort of thing happens, though. People are told by jobcentre staff that they have to attend work activities or courses when they don’t. I’ve seen that more than once over the years, as I say. It’s the sort of thing I mean when I say that DWP systems are a shambles.

Emma said she’d missed the workforce interviews because she didn’t realise they were taking place.

“They’re every three months now (the work-related interviews at the jobcentre). They used to be every 12 months. It’s if you miss the appointments, that was why…

“I thought they were going to sanction me. I thought they were going to stop all my money, but they haven’t. They’ve just reducted [sic] so much money off of my benefits.”

Emma said that she hadn’t appealed the decision to cut her benefits, because she didn’t know that she could appeal.

“They said when I went to the jobcentre, when you’ve attended your workforce interview, they [the payments] will go back to normal.”

Emma doubted these workforce interviews would lead to work. I’ve attended enough of these work-related meetings to doubt the point of them myself. At best, work-related interviews are box-ticking exercises: proof by jobcentres for the DWP that people who sign on have been encouraged to look for jobs. At worst, they’re a means of keeping benefit recipients on a short leash – of making people return repeatedly to their jobcentres where they know they’re being watched. Here’s a story I did about such pointless demands being put on people who signed on at the North Kensington jobcentre: a place that was harsh on benefit recipients in my experience and that is in the mainstream news re: signon demands at the moment after the Grenfell disaster.

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While we’re talking austerity, can anyone help with this question on Income Support, conditions and sanctions

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Any help on this one appreciated:

On the topic of compliance and Income Support – I’m speaking atm with a woman aged 31 who has a five-year-old and a six-month-old (we met at the South Chadderton foodbank on Monday). She said that she’s been called in every three months to her jobcentre for a “workforce interview” – sounded like some sort of work related activity type interview from her description. She’d been sanctioned (had her benefit total reduced) for missing interviews that she didn’t realise were taking place. She was at the foodbank getting a food parcel and nappies for the baby, because, needless to say, she’d run out of money. She was having social fund repayment money deducted from her benefits as well. Total shambles, to say the least.

My question – how often are people who are in receipt of Income Support with a child under the age of a year now required to attend workforce or work-related activities? Gave this question a google, but I don’t know that I’m further ahead. This woman said she was getting a lot of letters about attending with all kinds of dates on them and calls changing dates, and everything was in the usual mess.

I was also wondering (again) how low the DWP was permitted to cut a benefits income, particularly for people with such young children. Readers of this site will know that I’ve asked the DWP about this before. The woman in this post today and another man who I spoke to at South Chadderton foodbank on Monday both said that they were having money deducted from their benefits for social fund loan repayments that never seemed to get smaller, or end (I hear this a lot – people feel they’re paying social fund loans off for years). They couldn’t afford the deductions. They also said that the DWP had told them they must put any requests for a repayment reduction in writing. Not so long ago, you could call the DWP up to ask the department to reduce loan repayment amounts if people were really struggling. I’ve done that for people myself. Now, in the Oldham neck of the woods at least, people are told they must write in. Good luck with that, etc.

Anyway. I am so glad the great and the good on the political scene have decided that austerity is over. I can only suppose the memo on that hasn’t reached the DWP yet. I’m sure that will happen in good time.

If you can shed any light on any of this, but prefer not to leave a comment below, feel free to drop me a line here.

You don’t end austerity simply by announcing it’s over. You have to undo the damage that’s been done

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I’ve been thinking about these suggestions that new government or leadership (whatever any of that is now) will take another look at austerity and public sector cuts, because worthies have suddenly discovered how much people dislike austerity.

A few of those thoughts:

Yesterday, I went to the South Chadderton foodbank to talk for a few hours with people who came in for food parcels.

I spoke to Emma, 31, Theresa, 50 and one bloke who’d lost his job as a cleaner after an accident and still had all his kids living with him at home.

Emma had two very young children living with her – a boy of five and a baby of six months. She’d had her benefits cut for missing a so-called “workforce meeting” that she hadn’t known about. She also had all sorts of problems with child tax credit – the HMRC was demanding several thousand pounds which it claimed she’d been overpaid back in the day. A lot of money was being deducted from her benefits – for a social fund loan that she thought should be paid off by now and other repayments and totals which she did not think made sense. She said that she was trying to live on about £105 a fortnight. That was with two little kids. Things were going about as well for Emma as you’d expect.

Theresa was in recovery and living on nothing while she waited to see if she could win an appeal against an ESA fit-for-work decision.

I took longer interview recordings with everyone I spoke to, so will post those as an update when I’ve transcribed them.

Point for now is that all these problems still rage on. I am hardly convinced that a government in chaos will undo them. I’m not convinced any government will ever undo them, if I’m honest. I don’t think a lot of people know how badly the public sector has been hit. Frontline services everywhere are in tatters. A lot of the time, you can’t even get through on the phone to council or DWP officers to ask for help with a problem or a claim. If you do get through, often as not they’ve got nothing to help with.

I know a great many people who’ve been clobbered on myriad fronts – endless ESA fit for work assessments, PIP applications which go nowhere, the bedroom tax, problems with tax credits, sanctions, council tax debts, court debts for evictions, the benefit cap and god knows what else. I am of course delighted (ha) to hear the likes of Michael Gove deliver the world of pearlers such as “we also need to take account of legitimate public concerns about ensuring that we properly fund public services,” but honest to god and really. They’ve decimated public services already. They really have. I’ve been writing about this destruction for years now, so I’ve had a good look at the mess. Where would you even start?

Why we’re on strike: Eastern Avenue jobcentre staff out against jobcentre closures

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Staff at the Eastern Avenue jobcentre in Sheffield are on a PCS strike today in protest at the government’s proposed closure of Eastern Avenue jcp and a raft of other jobcentres around the country.

People are furious about these jobcentre closure plans. As readers of this site will know, local people who claim benefits have told me that they can’t afford to travel to jobcentres in other towns, that public transport to other jobcentres is patchy at best as transport is cut and disappears, and that they worry they’ll have no access to computers to use locally to search for jobs if local jobcentres close. People say they can’t always afford internet access on their phones.

Local people also say that these non-stop closures of public services in their towns are destroying smaller places. Post the Brexit vote, government is supposed to be deeply concerned about people in the regions who feel left behind, but you wouldn’t know that from government’s ongoing removal of local services.

Clare Goonan, PCS rep and Eastern Avenue jobcentre worker (she is jobcentre’s disability employment adviser and has worked at the jobcentre for 12 years) said on the phone from the strike this morning:

“We [at the Eastern Avenue jobcentre] offer a personalised, one-stop service… people can pop in from local, whereas if it was closed, they’d have to get on a bus, or two buses, and go online. We have a lot more interviews than what they would do if they were in town.

“And the jobsearch and computers – we’ve got 12 computers [at Eastern Avenue] that customers can come in and use if they want on internet. What people would have to do [if the jobcentre closes], is to pay to go into town, because there is no other services around here.

“There is a library, but the possibility is that the library won’t stay open, because of cuts, so if we don’t – we [at the jobcentre] send a lot of people around there [to the library], so if we are not sending people around there [if the jobcentre closes], they [the library] may not stay open. [We have] more a personalised service than town.

“It costs £4.90 a day to go into town [on the bus]. The cheapest ticket is £15 a week, is the cheapest one to go to town.

“Not sure on the reimbursement of travel… in town, there would be a lot more reimbursement of fares. If we get a customer to come in and it’s not their signing day, then it would be to their expense, so they would have to claim it back. [People need to pay for a ticket themselves first].

“[We are striking] to show management that we are standing together. At the moment, there are no members gone in [to work past the picket line] as yet. We’ve not seen any staff go in, apart from higher management that usually go in, we’ve not seen any staff go in as well. The office is not definitely open yet. We want to show management that we’re serious about it, we don’t want the community to lose the last public services that around here. If it’s [the jobcentre] is closing, then this area, which is one of the most deprived areas of Sheffield, will lose its last public services.

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Meanwhile in the real world… rent arrears and Universal Credit

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For all those wondering about causes of homelessness and housing problems in Manchester, Oldham, etc…

Below is another example of fallout from government’s brilliant (not) decision to pay rent money directly to tenants rather than landlords when people claim Universal Credit. I’m working through a collection of recordings I’ve made this year with people who have benefit and rent problems. Thought I’d post this one, because it’s an example of the sort of silent fall that people in the real world continue to take while elections rumble on and online factions scream at each other:

A couple of weeks ago, I visited one of the Oldham lunchrooms which is attended people who have benefits, housing, addiction and money problems. A charity gives out a free lunch at this location every week. I go along to talk with people as they have their lunch. I’m being vague about the location and charity on this occasion, because the woman I recorded the conversation with below said that she already had problems with people in the area following her and targeting her:

“I’ve had every Tom, Dick and Harry in my flat… They’ve robbed phones, robbed money and they even took the food out of my cupboard… it’s me own fault with my head being a bit…”

This woman was small, frail-looking and cold – as in not dressed warmly enough. She’d come to see if there was a winter coat among the free clothes that the charity sometimes hands out. I took some pictures of her in a coat she found. I might pixelate and post them another time.

Anyway. This woman – let’s call her Kelly – was 49. Kelly was in trouble with rent arrears. She said that she her debt was £400 and counting. She also said that she had a letter which told her that eviction was on the cards. Her conversation was hard to follow in places. Kelly was confused, under the influence and obviously unwell. She was struggling to cope, she said, after a recent bereavement.

Kelly said that her rent situation started to become a problem when she was moved onto Universal Credit. She’s paid a lump sum of benefit money directly each month and must pay her rent out of that.

Kelly said that she was finding this level of management too hard:

“What they have done is they have changed my benefit. They put me on Universal Credit. [I’m] struggling. I got to pay the rent and I’m in arrears. They pay me every month.”

I asked Kelly why money management was difficult for her. She kept saying, “because of my bereavement… It’s my head… because of my bereavement this year…

“My rent is about £380 a month. I need to talk about a repayment plan… with my bereavement and that, my head’s all… I haven’t got children.”

The conversation was hard to follow, as I say. These conversations often are.

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