In his autumn statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has outlined a further round of real term cuts to welfare budgets.
This is the story of one person in the Marlborough area and her struggle with the new rules and cuts in welfare payments. Her story is anonymous because she fears being victimised for giving Marlborough News Online her story. We will call her F.
F is around forty years old and a single mother. She is partially sighted. Her teenage child acts as her ‘young carer’ and is at school in the area. Because of her eyesight, she has not been allowed to drive for almost four years.
Last year F’s benefits stopped and she was told she had to get work. She went twice to be checked to see if she should be at work – and so lose her Disabled Living Allowance. The first time the tester stood at the far end of the room and asked how many fingers were being held up.
The second time F was accompanied to the testing centre (and the person who took her there was told to claim mileage for the journey.) When F was collected from the reception area, she followed the tester to his office. She was told that if she could follow him along the corridor she was fit for work.
At the testing centre “They don’t say anything final to your face – the results come by post.” She had to find a job.
As getting proper magnifying aids and so on, to enable her to see to work has, in F’s experience, put employers off, she decided to be self-employed. In January this year F started work for a well-known national company.
As she suffers from intermittent depression, F thought this ‘freelance-type’ work would allow her to make up her hours when she felt able: “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
But three weeks ago F was told that this work was ‘not viable’ – she was earning well below the national minimum wage. She would lose her tax credits.
Not only lose them, but she would have to pay back what she had received – the ‘tax credit people’ sent her a bill for several thousand pounds. Why they had not spotted the problem in the nine months and more she was doing this work remains a mystery. They were sent all the information about F’s work that they asked for. (Somebody is helping her appeal against this demand for re-payment.)
When the tax credits stopped – so did her housing benefit. She has not been told why.
Now she is existing on payments for child credit, family allowance and what remains of her Disability Living Allowance.
F has been to a Job Centre Plus and may get Job Seekers Allowance. But this will take between ten days and four weeks to sort out. F hopes to get careers advice and be helped to find a job to suit her disability.
Before she had to get paid work, F did voluntary work at a local drop-in centre for the elderly. She really enjoyed the work. But when she asked whether she could go on doing voluntary work, with the number of hours she did being signed for, F was told “You can’t live on fresh air, can you?” So that ruled out any Big Society solution.
She finds heating her two bedroom home very expensive. And the cost of food is going up. Five weeks after she put in an order for everyday groceries (“We don’t eat much meat – it costs so much”), she put in the same order again: its cost had gone up by £15. So she cancelled the order.
What worries F more than anything at the moment is the uncertainty of all the government’s changes. And added to that at the moment is the uncertainty of whether she will get Job Seekers Allowance and if she does what she will have to do to prove she’s looking for the work she wants to do.
The uncertainty of the weather is always there – F hopes it won’t stay too cold for too long or the electricity key will have to take precedence over nutritious food on the shopping list.
Runner clocks up 93 miles in 24-hour treadmill marathon
