Tag Archives: housing benefit

Court showdown for DWP over Errol Graham – who starved to death after his benefits were axed

Errol Graham: he starved to death after the Department for Work and Pensions cut off his benefits.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will have to answer questions in court about the legality of its safeguarding policies after a family challenged it over the death of a vulnerable man.

The DWP ignored its own safeguarding advice to deprive Errol Graham of his benefits, This Site reported previously.

Left with no income, Mr Graham starved to death.

He had been receiving incapacity benefit, and then ESA, for many years as a result of enduring mental distress that had led to him being sectioned.

The DWP stopped Mr Graham’s Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) entitlement – and backdated that decision to the previous month – after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face Work Capability Assessment (WCA) on August 31, 2017.

He had not been asked to fill in an ESA50 questionnaire, though.

The government department managed to stop an ESA payment that had been due to be credited to his bank account on October 17, the same day it made the second unsuccessful safeguarding visit.

Its own rules state that it should have made both safeguarding visits before stopping the benefits of a vulnerable claimant.

Not only that, but the DWP had needed – but failed – to seek further medical evidence from Mr Graham’s GP, in order to make an informed decision about him.

In fact, it seems this would not have made much difference as Mr Graham’s GP had not seen him since 2013, or recalled him for vital blood tests or issued prescriptions since 2015, despite medical conditions including significant, long-term mental distress and hypothyroidism.

Because he had lost his entitlement to ESA, Mr Graham’s housing benefit was also stopped.

When bailiffs knocked down his front door to evict him on June 20, 2018, they found a dead body that weighed just four and a half stone. The only food in the flat was a couple of out-of-date tins of fish.

Mr Graham was 57 years old.

Now, solicitors Leigh Day tell us:

“Mr Graham’s son’s partner, Alison Turner, has been granted permission to a full judicial review challenging the legality of the current safeguarding policies and the failure of the DWP to review and revise those policies as promised at Errol’s inquest.

“Alison will argue that the safeguarding policies are unlawful as they create a significant risk of breaching the human rights of vulnerable individuals like Errol and she will seek a declaration that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Therese Coffey, has unlawfully breached her legitimate expectation that a review would be carried out resulting in revised policies.

“Following the Court Order the DWP now has 35 days to serve her Detailed Grounds and Evidence defending the safeguarding policies and explaining why Ms Coffey has not reviewed and amended those policies as promised at Errol’s inquest.”

Yes, there was an inquest – at which the Assistant Coroner decided not to write a “Regulation 28” report demanding changes to DWP safeguarding procedures to “prevent future deaths” because the DWP claimed it was already completing a review of its safeguarding, which was supposed to finish last autumn.

No such review has ever seen the light of day.

The court has ordered that a two-day hearing be listed to consider the case.

Ms Turner said: “Errol had a long history of serious mental illness which left him severely incapacitated. When the circumstances of his death came to light we had hoped – and from what the DWP stated at the inquest, we had expected – that the department would review their safeguarding policies and involve us in that review.

“But, incredibly, that has not happened. We deserve answers and those answers need to be public for the sake of other families and other vulnerable benefits claimants who suffer similar mental health difficulties.

“No one else should be put at risk in the same way Errol was because adequate safeguarding measures are not in place.”

Ms Turner is represented by Tessa Gregory, who said: “Our client believes that the DWP’s current safeguarding policies are not fit for purpose as they expose vulnerable individuals to a significant risk of harm, as was so tragically illustrated by Errol’s death.

“The DWP committed at Errol’s inquest to reviewing the applicable policies but two years after his death and one year after the inquest, nothing has changed.

“Our client therefore feels she has been left with no option but to bring these proceedings to … force the Secretary of State to take steps to ensure that no other families have to suffer in the terrible way her family has.”

Source: Family Of Errol Graham Granted Permission For Judicial Review Against DWP

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Try telling Errol Graham that ‘Black Lives Matter’. Oh you can’t – he’s dead

Errol Graham.

What? You think Errol Graham only died because he was ill? Your Conservative government is multiply-prejudiced and can ensure that people die for any number of trumped-up and ridiculous reasons.

Consider this:

Fair point?

Errol Graham was starved to death by a prejudiced Conservative-run benefit system.

My report on Mr Graham states:

He had been receiving incapacity benefit, and then ESA, for many years as a result of enduring mental distress that had led to him being sectioned.

The DWP stopped Mr Graham’s Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) entitlement – and backdated that decision to the previous month – after making two unsuccessful visits to his home to ask why he had not attended a face-to-face Work Capability Assessment (WCA) on August 31, 2017.

He had not been asked to fill in an ESA50 questionnaire, though. Why not?

The government department managed to stop an ESA payment that had been due to be credited to his bank account on October 17, the same day it made the second unsuccessful safeguarding visit.

Its own rules state that it should have made both safeguarding visits before stopping the benefits of a vulnerable claimant.

So the Tories cut off his benefits early, after a botched benefit reassessment procedure.

Here’s the clincher:

On an ESA form years before, he had told the DWP he could not cope with “unexpected changes”, adding: “Upsets my life completely. Feel under threat and upset…”

He said: “Cannot deal with social situations. Keep myself to myself. Do not engage with strangers. Have no social life. Feel anxiety and panic in new situations.”

The DWP had needed – but failed – to seek further medical evidence from Mr Graham’s GP, in order to make an informed decision about him.

In fact, it seems this would not have made much difference as Mr Graham’s GP had not seen him since 2013, or recalled him for vital blood tests or issued prescriptions since 2015, despite medical conditions including significant, long-term mental distress and hypothyroidism.

It was known that Mr Graham’s condition made him fear contact with people he did not know – like benefit assessors who turned up on his doorstep unannounced. But they still did it. And they still demanded that he attend a work capability assessment in a place full of people he did not know, without even having sent him a benefit claim form first.

They treated him unfairly. Isn’t that the whole point of the Black Lives Matter movement – that people of colour are treated unfairly?

As a result, he starved to death.

And the only reason we know this is his Housing Benefit was cut off at the same time as ESA, so he stopped paying rent. His body was found by bailiffs entering the house to repossess it.

The Tory-run Department for Work and Pensions would never have checked up on his well-being.

We already knew this. When I submitted a Freedom of Information request to find out how many people had died after the Tory government had cancelled their sickness benefit claims, the Department for Work and Pensions said it was unable to provide information for anyone whose claims had been cancelled more than two weeks before their deaths. It is government policy to leave these people to fend for themselves with no support at all.

Of course, leaving someone to starve to death in their home is not as dramatic as beating them to death on the street (or asphyxiating them, in the case of George Floyd).

But it is still prejudicial treatment.

So, what is the current outcry saying, if it does not include sick/disabled people like Errol Graham in its outrage?

Is it really saying some black lives matter more than others?

Let’s change that.

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Unaffordable rents – arranged by Tories – are pushing low-income families towards homelessness

Nine out of every 10 homes for rent are too expensive for families on housing benefit or the equivalent, Local Housing Allowance – according to the National Housing Federation.

The report finds that 94 per cent of private rental properties are unaffordable for families on Housing Benefit, or the equivalent Local Housing Allowance (LHA).

It also found that 65 per cent of the families affected are in work – proving once again that the Tory mantra that “work is the best way out of poverty” is utter claptrap while they remain in office.

LHA was initially designed to cover the bottom 50 per cent of market rents – in any area. This was reduced to 30 per cent in 2011, after the Tory-led Coalition government came into power (with help from the Liberal Democrats). Rates were divorced from market rents altogether in 2013, and frozen in 2016.

One can only conclude that this was done to price benefit-dependent families out of the market. In the least-affordable parts of the UK – southern and eastern England – only one per cent of privately-rented properties are affordable to those on LHA.

Analysis of data on private rental listings found that:

  • Only 7.54% of rental properties advertised in England are affordable to LHA claimants.
  • “Family-sized” properties, i.e. those with two or more bedrooms, are even less affordable, with only 6.5% being affordable at the relevant LHA rate.
  • Southern and Eastern parts of England are the least affordable areas.
  • In 2011, LHA was set to the 30th percentile of rents within Broad Rental Market Areas, meaning that claimants should have been able to afford 30% of the rental market in each BRMA. In 2019, the median percentage of the rental market that is affordable within a BRMA is only 5.9%.
  • Only 2.75% of rooms within shared accommodation are affordable at LHA. The shared accommodation rate is usually the only LHA rate that single people aged under 35 may claim.

The National Housing Federation has drawn the obvious conclusion – that Tory policies have pushed homelessness to record levels – and are pushing children into overcrowded and poor quality accommodation, like shipping containers and converted office blocks.

The organisation is demanding that the government LHA payments to cover at least the lowest-costing 30 per cent of privately-rented homes again. It also wants a £12.8 billion annual investment in building new social housing.

I think we all know what’s likely to happen about that: Nothing.

You can read the full briefing here.

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Did DWP stop this woman’s benefit SOLELY to make her suicidal?

This story, broken today by Welfare Weekly, would be shocking if it wasn’t what we have come to expect from the Tory-run Department for Work and Pensions.

It concerns Patricia, who has Ankylosing Spondylitis and has a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder.

A social housing tenant, she had been receiving Employment and Support Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, and Housing Benefit.

Then the DWP stopped her Housing Benefit – suddenly, for no reason, and without telling Patricia.

The first she knew of it was when her housing association told her she was in arrears.

Attempts to sort it out involved getting in touch with staff at the DWP – which took a considerable amount of time – and trying to re-claim HB, which took even more.

Then she was told her application was not valid because she was no longer entitled to ESA and needed to apply for Universal Credit – triggering a further delay of – can you believe it? – four months.

She is now receiving UC – at a lower rate than she had been getting on ESA. Her HB has also been reinstated – but not backdated, so she is having to use part of her UC payments to pay off her rent arrears.

This means she now has huge difficulties paying her other bills.

In the knowledge of all the above, it should be no surprise to anybody that Patricia’s mental health has suffered appallingly.

My question is: was this a deliberate plan by someone at the Tory-run DWP?

Let’s face it, we see no reason Patricia’s HB was stopped.

And if she needed to transfer from ESA to UC, why was this not done automatically?

It seems clear that there was an intention to cause as much trouble, for this poor woman, as possible.

And we’re told the benefit system is a safety net for people who have fallen on hard times!

If they’re in hard times, why is the DWP trying to make matters worse?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. We know why. It’s run by Tories.

And there’s only one solution.

So if you’re not currently registered to vote, visit gov.uk/register-to-vote and make sure you’re ready for the general election that’s coming after we’re sure Boris Johnson can’t inflict a “no deal” Brexit on us all.

Then vote in a Labour government. You’ll be saving lives.

Source: Exclusive: ‘Suicidal’ Universal Credit claimant left with six months of rent arrears

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How Tories have fun: Trying to starve and evict a disabled man

Christopher Brasil: The Conservative-run Department for Work and Pensions fabricated reasons to cut off his benefits and have him thrown out of his home, it seems.

This story tells you all you need to know about the benefit system under the Conservative government:

Rachael is right. The story of Christopher Brasil illustrates every cruelty that the Conservative government can inflict on you – and I mean you, because it could happen to anybody, given the fact that the trigger was an accident, and we can all be prey to them.

Check out the details, according to iNews:

Mr Brasil was a lorry driver for 30 years, until he fractured his hip after he was hit by bicycle four years ago. The incident left him relying on walking sticks, and diabetes caused his eyesight to deteriorate, so the DVLA revoked his heavy goods vehicle licence and his employers dismissed him on grounds of ill health.

Now, suffering from blurred vision, vertigo, poor hearing and epilepsy, he says he is “unemployable”.

But the Department for Work and Pensions disagreed.

After three years in which he claimed first Disability Living Allowance and then Employment and Support Allowance, the DWP started messing with Mr Brasil.

First, Job Centre advisors lost his sick note and stopped his payments for four weeks. He says he brought it to the office in January, when staff took it off him and said they faxed it to someone else. But then he was told he had not provided it; it was not recorded on their systems. They imposed a four-week sanction.

The lesson for all benefit claimants who need to hand in sick notes to prove benefit entitlement is: Get a receipt for them, signed by the staff member you are booked to see.

One month later, he was made to take a work capability assessment, told he was fit for work and ordered to claim Jobseekers’ Allowance.

He said the assessment report was “blatant lies.” It said he attended the assessment on his own, but he was with a social worker from a charity. In addition, they report said he did not use walking sticks and was fit and capable.

Then he was told Universal Credit was being rolled out in his area and he was switched to it. This meant he was forced to endure the standard five-week wait for the first payment – meaning Mr Brasil was left without payments for a total of two months.

That is when Mr Brasil, who lives alone and has no family, was forced to go to a soup kitchen and food bank. With his gas and electricity cut off, he had taken out a credit card and considered resorting to pay day loans.

Finally, after his Universal Credit claim began in September, Mr Brasil was told he was no longer entitled to housing benefit. He ran up rent arrears and was served with an eviction notice.

Who’s going to tell me all that is purely accidental?

I think this man was targeted. His sick note was deliberately mislaid; his work capability assessment was deliberately rigged.

The intention was to torment him. It didn’t matter whether he became homeless, starved, succumbed to his illnesses or became suicidal and tried (or succeeded) in killing himself as a result (see this article for information on how this can happen).

The comment the DWP provided is formulaic rubbish. I doubt if anybody checked the details of Mr Brasil’s case; they certainly would not have spoken about it or admitted any wrongdoing.

I wonder, though – what was the name of the Job Centre advisor who took Mr Brasil’s sick note in January? What did they do with that sick note? And can either of them be traced?

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Tories sneak out continued benefit freeze behind announcement of royal engagement

It’s all right for some: The Tories chose the day Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement to reveal that benefit claimants won’t receive a penny more next year.

Oh, joyous day! (That’s unless you receive Universal Credit, Jobseekers’ Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Housing Benefit, or have the amount of your payments limited under the Benefit Cap, of course.)

As the Royal Family announced the engagement of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, the Department for Work and Pensions decided it would be a good day to release some bad news – so ministers quietly published their proposed benefit rates for 2018-19.

As you can see, in the cases of the above-named benefits, there is no change.

So people on zero-hours contracts, in part-time work or low-paid full-time employment, and the long-term sick or disabled will find it even harder to make ends meet next year – let alone celebrate the nuptials of a man whose own state benefits are far better-paying than theirs.

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Help is available for people suffering Universal Credit-related money problems

Local councils have a duty to provide help for people with no income due to delays in Universal Credit payments – but they aren’t telling anyone.

A Vox Political reader has written in as follows:

“With Christmas on our doorstep, the Universal Credit roll-out is going ahead as planned with people being changed over at the beginning of December, which could leave families with little to no money for up to 12 weeks.

“Please ensure that anyone you know who is struggling understands that THERE IS HELP.

“If your money is stopped/late/delayed you can go to the council and fill in a Nil Income form.

“That will reinstate rent and council tax [they mean housing benefit and council tax reduction] and give access to further help like meter credits, food bank vouchers and emergency cash payments.

“This info is not readily available sadly and it should be. The authorities will only deal with it if you ask specifically which is a disgrace.

“So if your benefits have been sanctioned or if you suffer cash flow problems from UC, then remember help is still available.

“Also … never vote Tory again.“

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Anti-homelessness helpline now receiving call for help every 30 seconds

Almost 19,000 families became homeless after being evicted by a private landlord in the past year, the highest number ever recorded [Image: Getty].

Almost 19,000 families became homeless after being evicted by a private landlord in the past year, the highest number ever recorded [Image: Getty].

The Conservative Government is shifting its policy on homelessness – although whether it will be effective has yet to be seen.

After years of laissez-faire slackness regarding the causes of homelessness that have seen huge year-on-year increases under David Cameron, his successor Theresa May has announced a change.

From now on, local councils will be charged with preventing private landlords from throwing people out of their homes.

There’s just one catch: Local councils are being starved of money by – guess who? – the Conservative Government.

A helpline run by an anti-homelessness charity now receives one call asking for help every 30 seconds, new figures reveal.

Shelter’s advice line has seen the volume of calls rise by 50,000 in the past 12 months, with one in four cases taken on by the line from people who are homeless or at risk of losing their home within 28 days.

Almost 19,000 families became homeless after being evicted by a private landlord in the past year, a 200 per cent increase compared to five years ago and the highest number recorded.

In August this year the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee warned that the Government’s welfare reforms had played a significant role in driving up homelessness figures.

A report by the cross-party group of MPs warned that the number of rough sleepers in England had risen by 30 per cent to 3,569 between 2014 and 2015. The Committee in part blamed changes to housing benefits payments.

Other factors, such as a trend away from social housing and towards private renting, have been blamed for the increase in homelessness and rough sleeping in recent years.

Source: Anti-homelessness helpline now receiving call for help every 30 seconds | The Independent

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Five things George Osborne doesn’t want you to mention about his spending review


Let’s mention them:

Tory backbenchers cheered, but plenty of people will be hit. As experts look for the devil in the detail, here are five changes already causing alarm.

1. Grants abolished for nurses

Student nurses are to have their grants cut and will instead have to take out loans to pay for their tuition fees. A saving of up to £800m a year for the Government, some would-be nurses have already been put off. Katie, who planned to enrol on a postgraduate diploma in adult nursing next year, told HuffPost UK: “The NHS are crying out for nurses, more so those who have a bit of life experience behind them. But these cuts look to have more than out priced many of us.”

2. Tax credits protected – for now

The reversal of cuts to tax credits will avoid almost all the immediate losses next April, on average a £1,300 hit per family on the top-up benefit for workers. But as the Chancellor said: “Tax credits are being phased out anyway as we introduce Universal Credit.” So the Universal Credit – all welfare payments rolled into one – is likely to contain the cut when implemented in 2020. The Resolution Foundation says that by 2020 more than 3 million households are still set to lose an average of £1,000 from the £3.5bn cut. “Pain tomorrow is better than pain today – but it is still pain,” said Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation.

3. Free childcare limited

A flagship pledge of 30 hours of free childcare for three and four year olds has been scaled-back, meaning it will only available to parents working more than 16 hours a week when it launches in 2017. It will also no longer apply to families with incomes of more than £100,000. The biggest victims? Single parents working part-time. The Family and Childcare Trust warned of a “new barrier to work for those parents”. “We urge the Government to re-examine these criteria so that all working families can benefit from this generous offer,” said chief executive Julia Margo.

4. Housing benefit crackdown

A cap on housing benefit for new tenants in the social rented sector was announced. The reform will mean that housing benefit will “no longer fully subsidise families to live in social houses that many working families cannot afford”, official documents said as it bring rules in line with the private sector. The disability charity Mencap warned: “This could seriously impact on people with a learning disability living in social housing and specialist supported housing, jeopardising their ability to live independently in their communities.”

5. “£56 added to the tank”
Tucked away in the Autumn Statement “scorecard” is a saving of around a quarter of a billion pounds every year by retaining the diesel supplement in the company car tax until 2021, when new cars will have to be cleaner. This will cost the average BMW 3 Series driver in a company car £182 if they are the basic rate taxpayer, and £365 for higher rate taxpayers. Treasury sources said that £126 would be deducted by employers via National Insurance – but that is still a fuel tax hike of £56. Not a great message to send “hard-working families”.

Source: 5 Things George Osborne Doesn’t Want You To Mention About His Spending Review

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At last someone in the Labour Party is speaking up on political issues

… and it’s John Healey! Who’d have thought it?

His article in yesterday’s Guardian makes a lot of sense (although obviously he doesn’t go far enough in his suggestions. Labour never does, these days).

At least he’s making the right noises – pointing out that the Conservative Government’s plan to cut social security by £12 billion will harm people who are trapped by failing markets for housing and jobs. Think about it – cutting social security means people will be more insecure. That’s probably why Tories prefer to call it “welfare”.

He claims that the cut to the total annual household cap on benefits, from £26,000 to £23,000, is popular but will save less than one per cent of the total target.

More will follow – cutting tax credits (the subsidy for under-paying businesses, meaning people in work will be plunged into poverty), housing benefit (the subsidy for landlords, meaning people will be unable to pay their rent), and to disability payments (because nobody cares what happens to society’s most vulnerable until they become society’s most vulnerable; the evidence suggests these people will die).

According to Healey, every time the Tories wield the axe, they will challenge Labour to support them. If Labour refuses, the Tories will then be free to shout about Labour being the “party of welfare” – and never mind the fact that the Tories are the party of corporate welfare, funnelling billions to bosses.

Many of the cuts will punish the poor – without reducing the benefits bill, he reckons.

Take tax credits. Over the last five years, the Coalition government made 23 separate cuts, freezes and rule changes to tax credits costing working families £13.4bn. But overall spending rose, by £2bn.

Or housing benefit, where 10 separate cuts cost low-income renters both in and out of work over £5bn. But the total bill went up by £4bn over the Parliament.

Healey drew up a lengthy factual analysis of Coalition Government policy on housing benefits and discovered that the Tories and Liberal Democrats were actively increasing the bill.

The decision, for example, to raise council and housing association rents to 80 per cent of market rates will increase housing benefit spending by £5.4bn over the next 30 years, on those homes built in the last parliament alone.

He called this a “Conservative policy failure, with both the taxpayer and families on low incomes paying the price”.

His solution was for Labour to commit to building 100,000 new council and housing association homes a year until 2020, in the knowledge that those homes would pay for themselves, in full, in housing benefits savings over 27 years.

Just as people take out a mortgage over that time period and see a return on their home investment, so government could do the same.

Every pound invested in a genuinely affordable home means the state pays out less in housing benefit.

Over thirty years, I calculated that £1 generates £1.18 in savings… by recycling savings in benefit to build new homes, the up-front capital costs for those 100,000 homes each year would be no greater than the housing investment when I was Labour’s housing minister in our last year of government.

We can’t spend this parliament debating welfare costs on Tory terms again, so our challenge is to sidestep the narrow Tory narrative and start making a bigger case for bringing benefits spending down.

So this is the answer: Use the Conservatives’ own record against them and demonstrate that the government is asking the wrong questions and proposing the wrong solutions.

Source: Labour must make and win the big arguments on welfare – Comment – Voices – The Independent

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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