“The proportion of adult social care workers in England leaving their jobs has increased 7.6% over the five years to 2017-18, according to workforce figures.
Most of those leaving were new recruits, particularly people under 30 – with a turnover rate of 42.4% in the last financial year – according to the charity Skills for Care’s annual report, published today. …”
https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2018/09/social-care-staff-turnover-rises
“Ask most people about England’s epidemic of empty homes and they are likely to think of lavish vacant mansions in London owned by absent foreign billionaires.
In fact, the majority of empty properties are in post-industrial areas, where poverty rates are high and house prices languish well below their pre-crash levels. Such a place is Stockton-on-Tees, near Middlesbrough, where Martyn Jones lives.
Two years ago Jones, 23, was homeless and relying on friends to let him sleep on their couches while he struggled to find work. Today, he is painting a wall in a gutted home on a quiet street, part of a group tasked with refurbishing some of the area’s many vacant, derelict homes.
Last week, Theresa May pledged an extra £2bn for housing associations to fund large-scale developments. But with new house building not providing enough affordable homes for more than 1 million people on waiting lists in England, social enterprises and councils are trying to bring empty homes, which number well over 200,000 and are worth almost £50bn, back into occupancy.
Over 11,000 homes have stood empty for at least 10 years, data shows
One of them is Community Campus 87, which buys such properties in Stockton-on-Tees, refurbishes them and offers them to previously homeless tenants at rents below the going rate for social housing. In the process, it provides jobs and skills training for people such as Jones.
Having left school at 16, Jones struggled with substance use and anxiety, unable to hold down a job. When his mother kicked him out, he worried he was out of options. “I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Campus,” he says. “They gave me a home, helped me along the way and now I’ve started going to college.”
Amid a dramatic national collapse in apprenticeships, about 15% of Community Campus’ staff are apprentices, according to its director and founder, Simon Virth. The group, which has refurbished about 250 homes so far, also offers help with job interviews, jobcentre appointments and finding free educational programmes at local colleges.”
“More than a million vulnerable people on low incomes are being driven deeper into poverty after being shunted into the private rental sector due to an acute shortage of social accommodation.
A report commissioned by the Nationwide Foundation, an independent charity, says that the shortfall in social housing has been met by a doubling in size of the private rented sector in the past 25 years.
But this has forced more households, many on benefits with dependent children or a disabled family member, to pay significantly more for unsuitable housing.
The shake-up of the benefits system – which has led to sanctions being imposed on people claiming universal credit who fail to attend meetings with job advisers or decline to participate in employment schemes – has had a dramatic effect on the attitudes of private landlords.
“Because of sanctions you’re more likely to fall into arrears and to be asked to leave because you are in arrears,” said the author of the report, Dr Julie Rugg, of the University of York’s centre for housing policy. She has spent 20 years studying the benefits system and its relationship with the housing sector.
“The welfare system change has created vulnerability,” Rugg said. “It didn’t used to be the case 10 years ago but it is now. People know the benefits system is tightening up but they might not realise that if you’re at the bottom end and receiving benefits then your situation can be pretty precarious indeed.”
Rugg’s report found that more than a third (38%) of the private rented sector now comprises low-income households who are classed as vulnerable.
And almost nine out of 10 of these – equivalent to 1.4 million households – are living either in poverty or in poor or overcrowded conditions.
The shortage of social housing stock means private landlords can charge more than housing associations, often for inferior accommodation.
“Generally speaking, people are paying an extra £25 a week because they are living in the private rented sector,” Rugg said. “It might not sound a lot but if your benefit income is £75 a week, £25 is quite a big chunk of money.
“We know from talking to people on benefits that after paying their tax and utilities and rent they might be looking at £30 a week to live on. If they are paying an extra £25 a week as a result of living in the private rented sector then that’s actually creating a level of destitution that’s quite frightening.”
Last week Theresa May announced £2bn to build new “affordable” homes in England. Under the plan, housing associations, councils and other organisations will be able to bid for the money to spend on new projects, starting from 2022.
But Leigh Pearce, chief executive of the Nationwide Foundation, said that the government needed to examine the role of the private rented sector, too.
“We need a fundamental rethink about who private renting is for and a comprehensive strategy to ensure it is fit for purpose, to ensure that everyone in this country has a home they can thrive in.
“This includes addressing the really important question about what is expected of the private rented sector, including who it can and should provide homes for, and how it sits alongside other housing tenures.”
“The number of secret reviews carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) into deaths linked to benefit claims appears to have doubled in the last two years, according to figures the information watchdog has forced the government to release.
The figures relate to the number of internal process reviews (IPRs), investigations conducted by the department into deaths and other serious and complex cases that have been linked to DWP activity.
They show that, from April 2016 to June 2018, DWP panels carried out 50 IPRs, including 33 involving the death of a benefit claimant, or roughly 1.27 death-related IPRs a month.
DWP figures previously obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) show that, between October 2014 and January 2016, there were nine IPRs involving a death, or about 0.6 a month.
These figures are only approximate, because the information about IPRs (previously known as peer reviews) provided by DWP through freedom of information responses does not provide precise dates for when each of them took place.
But they do appear to show a clear and significant increase since early 2016 in the number of IPRs carried out following deaths linked by DWP to its own activity.
They also appear to show a return to the kind of frequency of reviews related to deaths of claimants that were seen between February 2012 and October 2014, when there were 49 such reviews at a rate of about 1.5 a month, at a time when research and repeated personal testimonies showed the coalition’s social security cuts and reforms were causing severe harm and distress to claimants.
The new figures also show that 19 of the deaths in the last two years involved a claimant viewed as “vulnerable”, while six of the IPRs (and four deaths) related to a claimant of the government’s new and much-criticised universal credit (see separate story).
John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said ministers “always get up at the despatch box and say they are continually improving the system. This proves that to be false.
“Universal credit should be scrapped, sanctions should be scrapped and the government should call off the dogs, because it is leading to people’s deaths.”
McArdle said that if there was a tragedy involving the deaths of 33 people in a train crash there would be an independent inquiry into what went wrong.
But because these deaths were happening in the social security system, he said, no such public inquiry would take place.
He added: “It just shows a callous disregard for the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.”
A DWP spokeswoman declined to say whether the figures showed that DWP’s treatment of vulnerable and other benefit claimants had not improved significantly since 2012 and had worsened in the last two years.
She also declined to say if DWP was concerned that there had already been four IPRs following the death of a universal credit claimant, even though only a small number of people are currently claiming UC. … “
Throughout this government’s term those in social housing have been demonised as scroungers and workshy. The government instead chose to line the pockets of already-rich developers and people being helped to buy houses that cost up to £600,000.
Today, as Brexit continues to be a shambles, education is at breaking point, inequality is at its widest, the environment is being trashed and the NHS is on its knees, May announces that, in fact, people in council houses are mostly hard-working people trying desperately to make ends meet. And that occupying such housing should not be a “stigma”!
So what changed?
Nothing, except that more and more people are deserting her party and their votes are, of course, going with them – to people like Claire Wright, for example. And to other feisty independent councillors such as East Devon Alliance’s Gardner, Rixon, Jung and Shaw.
Read the fine print on this housing. It is not promised until 2022 – when Tories may well not be in power and when our economic climate could be very different.
And if you want to know who thinks social housing is a stigma, read here:
“… Housing Secretary James Brokenshire, asked who Mrs May saw as the politicians who “look down” on social housing, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think it’s more a sort of a greater public perception, sadly.”
Pressed further if there are Conservative politicians who take this view, Mr Brokenshire again referred to a “general stigma” which he said was a feeling among tenants who were consulted for a Government policy paper. … “
“On May 3rd 2018, 350 people were denied a vote in their local council elections. Their crime? Not possessing the right ID. The minister hailed these trials of mandatory voter ID as a ‘success’. The government must have a strange definition of success.
The scheme disenfranchised far more ordinary voters than potential wrongdoers: in a single day across the five councils, twice as many people didn’t vote due to having incorrect ID as have been accused of personation in eight years across the whole of the UK.
Out of 45 million votes last year, there were just 28 allegations of ‘personation’ (only one was solid enough to result in conviction). And yet the government seems determined to pursue voter ID, a policy we now know could cost up to £20 million per general election. This change to how we vote is a marked departure from the trust-based British way of running elections, and with little evidence to justify it.
It’s claimed that mandatory voter ID could boost faith in the democratic process. Yet according to academic research, 99 percent of election staff do not think fraud has occurred in their polling stations. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of the public say they think our polling stations are safe. And studies show that more accessible elections have greater electoral integrity – not the other way round.
The policy of mandatory strict ID presents a significant risk to democratic access and equality. Millions of people lack the strictest forms of required documentation. Documentation that is costly to acquire. It’s one of the reasons why organisations from the Runnymede Trust to the Salvation Army and Stonewall are concerned about these plans. The Windrush scandal earlier this year highlighted exactly the difficulties some legitimate voters could have in accessing identity documents – through no fault of their own.
If mandatory ID were to be rolled out nationally, it could potentially result in tens of thousands of voters being denied a say. And it would hit the already marginalised hardest: poorer C2DE social grade voters were half as likely to say they were aware of the ID requirements before the trials this May. And despite the costly publicity campaign this time, after election day, an average of around a quarter of residents were not aware of the pilots in four of the council areas – around four in 10 were not aware in Watford.
Imposing ID could have a significant impact on election outcomes, too. Thirteen seats were won at the 2017 Parliamentary election with a majority less than the number of people denied a vote in Bromley alone this May.
Yet still the government insists on running more trials of mandatory ID despite a broader commitment to improve democratic engagement and access. It is clear that much work needs to be done to remove barriers to voting, not to construct new ones. The most widespread problem poll staff have highlighted is voters turning up and not being on the register. Access for voters with disabilities is also a frequently cited problem.
We’ve learnt a lot this year, with our election and information regulators and parliamentarians highlighting the shocking state of the unregulated ‘wild west’ that is online campaigning. From the spread of disinformation, to secret political donations and ‘dark ads’, the real threats to our democracy are becoming clear.
In the face of these challenges, imposing voter ID is like rearranging the deckchairs of our democracy while we head towards an iceberg. The crucial task for government now is to focus on the real problems – we need to get to work solving them.”
Full report here:
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/publications/a-sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut-the-2018-voter-id-trials/
“… people in the UK were more likely to die from a cold home than in a road traffic accident during the cold snap last winter a report found. …
… the particularly cold spell between February 28 and March 3, dubbed the beast from the east, also left thousands of households stranded without access to support. …
We heard frequent reports of vulnerable people being discharged from hospital to homes with no light or heat. This is despite national guidance to the contrary.”
National Energy Action, as quoted in Sunday Times (pay wall)
Owl says: had the council raised council taxes by the cost of living in each of the years they boasted about freezing it AND making cuts at the same time ALL of the shortfall would have been covered – and more. They would have raised £114m whereas current cuts required immediately are £28 million. And all to pretend to voters that they were being very, very clever when they were being very, very stupid.
East Devon District Council operated with the same “freeze, cut and boast” throughout those years too. Though interestingly, one thing they don’t seem to have cut is staffing levels …..
“Tory council latest casualty of drastic austerity measures imposed on local government:
“On Wednesday, the eight-person cabinet of Somerset county council voted through £28m of spending cuts, spread over the next two years. Over the previous six months, speculation had raged over whether Somerset would become the next Conservative-run council to join Northamptonshire in effectively going bankrupt and calling in government commissioners to sort out its mess.
And here was the answer, delivered at not much more than a week’s notice. To avoid a final disastrous plunge into the red, there would be a hacking-down of help for vulnerable families and children with special educational needs, youth services, road-gritting, flood prevention, and much more.
The proceedings took place at Shire Hall, a mock-Gothic Victorian edifice in Taunton, Somerset’s county town. An hour before they started, around 80 people had gathered to protest, chanting a slogan apparently dreamed up by the local branch of the public sector union Unison: “Don’t let the eight decide our fate.” Among the quieter participants in the protest were women who work on the county’s GetSet programme, which helps some of the county’s most vulnerable children and families. Around 70 of them are set to lose their jobs.
For fear of getting in trouble, they insisted on speaking anonymously. “There’ll be no early help,” one of them told me. “Families won’t get any attention now until they’re in crisis.”
“I’m lost for words,” said one of her colleagues. “I don’t know what to say, really. We’ve kind of been expecting this for years, but at the same time, you think, ‘Surely it won’t happen.’” They said they were expecting the finer details of the cuts’ implications to emerge in the coming days.
This is proving to be the year when the drastic austerity imposed on councils over the last eight years reaches a critical point. England’s Labour-run cities are faced with economies that stretch into the future. Back in February, Northamptonshire hit a financial wall, and issued a Section 114 notice, banning expenditure on all services outside its statutory obligations to safeguard vulnerable people. As well as Somerset, councils in Norfolk, Lancashire and East Sussex were soon said to be in danger of going the same way.
Each of these councils has its own story, but there are two common threads: they are Tory-run, and their financial problems are often ramped up by the needs of populations spread over large areas. Somerset, which covers 1,640 square miles, is a case in point and, like many English counties, its outward appearance belies its social realities.
Articles in Sunday magazines might suggest the county is now the preserve of farmers and recently-arrived hipsters. But its three largest towns are Taunton, Yeovil and Bridgwater: post-industrial, hardscrabble places which contain 19 council wards in the 20% of English areas classed as the most deprived, and whose social fabric has already been drastically damaged by austerity.
Inside the council chamber, the debate occasionally flared into anger, intensified by the fact members of the public had been given only 48 hours to read 600 pages of documents before submitting questions.
Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors repeatedly brought up the fact that between 2009 and 2016, Somerset’s ruling Conservatives had imposed a freeze on council tax, when an increase of 1.9% would have brought in an additional £114m. There were mentions of Somerset’s recent record on children’s services and the fact that in 2013, inspectors from Ofsted gave its work the lowest rating of “inadequate”, a verdict it says it has been trying to address since.
There was also talk about what was going on at the highest levels of the administration. In April, the council’s finance director departed after 31 years, and reportedly took a job at a donkey sanctuary; his temporary replacement is said to be costing the council nearly £1,000 a day.
Legally, all councils have to set an annual balanced budget. In this financial year, the meeting was told, the council was facing an overspend of £11.4m. Much of this was rooted in the rising costs of children’s services, traceable in turn to a shortage of social workers, foster carers and adopters. But there were plenty of other factors at work. In the last five years, the biggest block of money Somerset receives from central government, the so-called revenue support grant,has fallen from around £90m to less than £9m. Next year, it will disappear completely. The county’s reserves are now down to a mere £7.8m.
Ten years ago, as George Osborne commenced the era of austerity, the council’s Tory leadership gave the impression that it was only too keen to help. These days, by contrast, most of the Conservatives trying to find a way through the mess have the wearied, put-upon look of people hanging on to an ethos of public service, but involved in something so difficult that it seems almost impossible.
This theme ran through the 20 minutes I spent talking to the council’s Tory leader, David Fothergill. He said the council’s problems had affected his health, but wouldn’t be drawn on any specifics. “This isn’t why I came into politics,” he said. “We all try to make things better, but at times, it seems like we’re making things worse to try to get there.”
Up until 2009, the council was run by the Lib Dems, which also had three of Somerset’s five MPs. Now, all of the county’s parliamentary representatives are Tories, along with 35 of its 55 councillors. As much as anything, then, this is essentially a story about the Conservative party, and the widening gap between national politicians and the local councillors whom they expect to dutifully implement many of the decisions made in Westminster and Whitehall. By way of making these tensions clear, one Somerset MP this week accused the council of being “an object lesson in waste”.
“Three or four weeks ago,” Fothergill said, “I wrote to all of the Somerset MPs, telling them what was coming. Very little has come back. Four or five days ago, I wrote saying, ‘I really need some help – we’re getting to the sticky end of this.’ And I got nothing back: no response.
“I know we’re all busy, but actually, the most important people in all this are people who live in Somerset. And I will stand up for them, and make myself very unpopular, because my job is to look after them.”
Not long after we spoke, an emailed statement from the department for housing, communities and local government arrived: “Our funding settlement gave a real terms increase in resources for local government in 2018-19. Local authorities are responsible for their own funding decisions, but over the next two years, we are providing councils with £90.7 billion to help them meet the needs of their residents. We are giving them the power to retain the growth in business rates income and are working with local government to develop a funding system for the future based on the needs of different areas.”
As Fothergill led six hours of discussion in the council chamber, his voice occasionally cracked with emotion. Early on, he announced that a £240,000 cut in help for young carers, which had prompted no end of outrage, would be deferred and reviewed. But everything else passed, and there was frequent talk of more cuts to come.
In the Shire Hall’s cavernous reception area, I spoke to Leigh Redman, one of Somerset’s three Labour councillors. “The leader of the council needs to stand up and start pointing the finger,” he said. “He should stand up and say to the government: ‘We’re bankrupt. You’ve put us in this position – now get us out of it.’”
Was he talking about setting an illegal budget, and thereby triggering the arrival of government commissioners?
“If needs be,” he said. He then paused. “I’m waxing lyrical,” he told me. He then turned and went back up the stairs to the council chamber. There were three hours and several millions pounds of cuts still to go.”
“English councils have spent almost £4bn making over 220,000 staff redundant since 2010, according to research which highlights the impact of austerity cuts on local government funding.
The north-west of England has seen the largest number of municipal jobs lost – over 41,190, followed by London (34,804), and the West Midlands (33,904), according to data obtained by the Local Government Chronicle (LGC).
Birmingham city council, the UK’s largest local authority, made by far the highest number of redundancies over the period – 8,769 – halving its workforce. As a consequence it spent the most on compensation packages (£184.8m). …
Many councils are preparing for a fresh round of cuts in a bid to stave off insolvency. Somerset county council yesterday announced it would make up to 130 staff redundant and make big cuts to children’s social care services as part of a two-year programme aimed at saving £28m.
The council, which was warned in May that its deteriorating finances put it at risk of going bust, said it was shifting to what it called a “core service offer”, meaning that it would look to deliver only those services it was legally obliged to provide.
David Fothergill, Somerset’s Tory leader, blamed the council’s position on a “broken” system of local government funding. The council had made £130m of savings over the past eight years. English councils have experienced government grant funding cut by around half since 2010.”
“Glitzy high-rise developments have been on the march in Manchester for the past 30 years but they have left poorer families out in the cold, according to a damning report.
Predictions have been made that Manchester is facing a looming housing crisis due to a “misguided” developer-led regeneration strategy.
Almost 50,000 new and mostly private homes are planned in central Manchester by 2040 – yet some 80,000 people are currently on Greater Manchester’s social housing waiting list.
The report from Alliance Manchester Business School said regeneration over the past 30 years has focused disproportionately on new flats and offices in the two central boroughs of Manchester and Salford. It said this has resulted in a centre filled with one and two-bed buy-to-let flats built for one demographic – young white-collar workers – and is failing to meet the demands of others such as families and those on lower incomes.
The report also argued that there is a danger of the creation of “social clearances” where expensive new developments could create community tensions. As central Manchester expands, the planned developments in areas such as Angel Meadow and Collyhurst could intrude on existing communities, many of them in areas of social deprivation.
Over the past 30 years, according to the reports’ authors, local authorities have allowed private property developers to lead the city’s regeneration, focusing primarily on building new flats and offices in central Manchester and Salford. The repercussion of this, they said, is that the city is no longer meeting the needs of many of its residents and does not have the social infrastructure such as schools, libraries and broadband “that communities need to thrive”. …”
Rural areas and small businesses hit hardest:
“…A total of 76 protected ATMs – those which are located one kilometre or more away from one another – were lost in the period.
Of those, 43 had Post Office over-the-counter services available nearby while 12 could not be accessed by the public. Some 21 machines were shut down with no alternative access to cash.
The Federation of Small Businesses expressed concerns that the closures could hit small business owners in remote areas. …”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/atm-closures_uk_5b993a88e4b0162f473313f0
When the top Anglican gets involved, you know things are bad!
Compare and contrast the way EDDC (previous post) and Claire Wright approach people with benefits problems. And the way Hugo Swire and Neil Parish do – nothing.
“Two officers from the Citizens Advice Bureau were able to help the majority of people with their challenges at the benefits drop-in meeting I held last month, at the Institute in Ottery St Mary.
Hilary Nelson, chief executive of East Devon Citizen’s Advice Bureau was on hand to support people, with her colleague, Sheran at the meeting, which took place on Tuesday 21 August.
Around a dozen people attended and listened to each other’s stories, which centred around difficulties with claiming a range of benefits, resulting in a great deal of stress.
Residents came from the Ottery area and beyond. Difficulties reported included with working tax credit overpayments and the impact of being financially penalised so as to be unable to pay bills and rent. Others reported being told they were fit to work, even though a doctor had submitted a report to state otherwise. Others wanted more information about the carers allowance.
Also at the meeting was student, Molly Dack, who is working with a benefits advocacy project to provide free legal advice free in Bristol. Molly is interested in supporting East Devon Citizen’s Advice Bureau in providing a similar project in Devon.
This sounded like a brilliant idea and received a warm welcome from Hilary Nelson. We had a discussion after the meeting and I advised on sources of funding that might help with setting up such a valuable service.
All the residents who came along were offered appointments with CAB officers, who said they would work to try and obtain the benefits they are entitled to, or assist with the appeals process.
Citizens Advice Bureau officers sit with clients, listen to their stories and represent them with government bodies. It is an invaluable service, more needed now than ever before, due to massive funding cuts by government.
Having represented local people on these issues, I can testify what a massively complicated bureaucratic system is in place. And because of austerity budget cuts there does not appear to enough staff in the call centre to cope with the level of demand.
Many of the problems reported at the meeting also related to process being inefficient and poor, such as a complaints manager not diverting her phone while on holiday, and people having to submit their details many times, or staff being irritable or repeatedly getting the information wrong.
Some cases had been going on for months without resolution. It’s exhausting, dispiriting and stressful when this happens. Even I found it stressful when I couldn’t get through for hour after hour and it wasn’t me who couldn’t pay my rent or bills!
Ms Nelson then updated everyone on the introduction of Universal Credit, which came into force in East Devon in July for new claimants. It merges six benefits into one and has resulted in a cut in Working Tax Credit. It has received a lot of very negative national press coverage, with the National Audit Office (NAO) essentially condemning it.
A report published by the NAO in June stated: “We think the larger claims for universal credit, such as boosted employment, are unlikely to be demonstrable at any point in future. Nor for that matter will value for money.”
The NAO report painted a damning picture of a system that despite more than £1bn in investment, eight years in development and a much hyped digital-only approach to transforming welfare, is still in many respects unwieldy, inefficient and reliant on basic, manual processes.
The very controversial six week delay for the first payment can now be resolved by claimants asking for an advance. Although this is treated as a loan and must be paid back.
Since the meeting’s publicity in the local press, I have been contacted by Lee Tozer, Devon and Cornwall Area Manager for Job Centre Plus.
He has been very helpful and I have since met with him and talked through some of the key issues. I also visited Honiton’s Job Centre (the only centre left in East Devon now as every other office has been closed due to austerity cuts) where I was greeted by its manager, Sadie Steadman. I chatted to her and with her staff about their roles and how they are trying to get more people back into work, as per the government’s directive.
I also spoke with an East Devon District Council officer, who is stationed at Honiton Job Centre five days a week to help claimants with housing benefit and Universal Credit issues.
I found the staff to be enthusiastic and compassionate. I sat in on an interview with someone who was as keen as mustard to get a job and was over the moon to have been offered one. That was nice.
I very definitely have reservations about the sanctions process. There is a difference between someone playing the system and not bothering to turn up for appointments and someone who genuinely is having problems or genuinely cannot work or arrive for an appointment, although staff assured me that they made every effort to contact someone before sanctioning them.
But there is bound to be a gap here in some cases, between the views of people who don’t believe they are fit for work (such as those people with a terminal illness or with cancer) and assessors who have assessed them as fit for work. From talking to the local staff they seemed to be running a tight and fair ship. However, the stuff coming out of the national press on the suffering caused by benefit sanctions is truly appalling.
As well as the fantastic support from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Job Centre Plus also provides a dedicated helpline for people who are having difficulties.
Please contact me direct if you need access to this number. Otherwise you can contact Job Centre direct or simply drop by. No prior appointment needed.
I will keep a close eye on this issue….”
Unbelievable – a Tory council having to offer help people struggling with a Tory government benefit cock-up. Perhaps councillors should ask how many residents have sought such help!
None of this should be necessary.
EDDC PRESS RELEASE:
“Universal Credit claimants struggling to cope with recent changes urged to seek help from council’s benefits team
‘We’re here to help’
East Devon District Council is urging working age residents who are struggling to cope with the recent changes to Universal Credit to seek help and get in contact with its benefits team.
Over the last few months, the team has been advising and supporting over 70 working age residents to make their Universal Credit claim, working alongside Honiton Jobcentre Plus staff with the roll out of the new benefit.
In many cases, team members have gone the extra mile to help those who have come forward. In one example, they helped a young man who had recently moved to Honiton into temporary accommodation. He had a small child and was distressed because he was having difficulties claiming benefits. An officer sat with him and helped him with his claim where, he discovered, he had more benefits available to him than he thought. Officers also contacted his support worker who will now help him with future claims.
In another case, a young claimant attended the Honiton office to make a claim online too late in the day to get payments sorted. Although she left with details of the foodbank nearby and an appointment as early as could be arranged, she was very distressed and in tears. Immediately the following morning the officer who helped the claimant organised help for her.
Cllr Dean Barrow, East Devon District Council’s portfolio holder for finance, said: “Our message is clear – please get in touch with us and we can help you. Many of our customers applying for Universal Credit are finding that our help is invaluable and the council genuinely wants to support our residents affected by this change and help them receive the benefit that they need.
“If anyone is experiencing any problems with claiming Universal Credit or have any concerns about it, please get in touch with the district council’s Benefits Team.”
If you are making a claim for Universal Credit don’t delay in making your claim and getting information to support your claim sent to the Jobcentre. If you need any help to make your claim or you are struggling with this, please get in touch with the district council’s benefits team by email benefits@eastdevon.gov.uk or by phone 01395 571770 or contact Jobcentre Plus on 0800 328 5644.
To find out more about Universal Credit visit our website: eastdevon.gov.uk/benefits-and-support/universal-credit/claiming-universal-credit/
Not only can failing academies not be returned to local authority control, they also retain control of the land that the failing schools occupy …. aaah, Owl begins to see a loophole here …
“… parents are asking why, when a school is failed by multi-academy trusts, can it not go back to local authority supervision? Just as with other botched privatisations, schools should have the opportunity to go back to the public sector. This leads us to the biggest part of the scandal – currently there is no mechanism to allow academies to go back to being community schools under the supervision of local authorities. Academisation is irreversible.
One school in Sussex pushed the education secretary, Damian Hinds, for an answer. The Department for Education didn’t give an inch – apparently the government is not considering returning any academies to local authority control because academisation has been a huge success with more children getting a good education as a consequence. …”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/11/academies-parents-tories-labour
Includes Somerset and Torbay – both Conservative councils.
“Austerity was sold to the British public as the only way to shore up our feeble national finances. Cutting public spending, voters were told, might make the UK a bit meaner. But if there was a social price to pay for this less generous approach to public spending, it would be easily outweighed by the benefits of making the UK into a leaner and more prosperous place.
It didn’t work. Eight years on, the economy remains anaemic and, while unemployment is low, under-employment and low pay are widespread. Meanwhile, the true costs of many of the cuts are only now being fully revealed. Unemployment support and the other payments that make up the UK’s system of social security were the number one target for reductions in spending, with legal aid and grants to local councils not far behind. Figures produced last year by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that the Department for Work and Pensions will have had a real-terms cut in its budget of almost 50% between 2010-11 and 2019-20. And local government leaders warn that they face a financial black hole, with county councils citing a £3.2bn funding gap over the next two years.
With the upcoming conference season sure to be dominated by Brexit, the question is when, if and how the reckoning that is urgently required with regard to these decisions is going to take place. Universal credit, the flagship welfare reform of the coalition and brainchild of former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, is a disaster. This week the Resolution Foundation thinktank issued a stark warning that unless the timetable for migrating claimants to the new system is relaxed, the whole thing could collapse. Following a highly critical National Audit Office report highlighting official intransigence as well as flaws in delivery and design, the question must now be asked whether this hugely expensive project should be abandoned altogether.
Meanwhile, mounting chaos in the justice system is finally attracting public attention. Last month the government stripped the private contractor G4S of responsibility for Birmingham prison, admitting that officers there had effectively lost control. This followed an announcement that the partial privatisation of probation services has failed and will be reversed. This week MPs debated a review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act amid rising concerns over the impact of legal aid cuts, including the phenomenon of “advice deserts” in parts of the country where services have virtually ceased to exist. A growing sense of crisis in the courts themselves is ably documented in the new eponymous book by the Secret Barrister.
Now council leaders are warning that children’s services face a tipping point, with 90 children entering care every day but repeated appeals for additional funding from the Treasury rejected. Only a safeguarding catastrophe will propel these most vulnerable members of society to news headlines. Mostly these distressed, frightened and neglected young people are hidden from sight.
Universal credit is due to be rolled out to more than a million tax credit claimants. Its failure carries a significant political risk. But mostly the political calculation appears to have been that people will not notice as spending on jails, support services for vulnerable families and legal aid is whittled away. Or that if they do notice, perhaps they won’t much care. Often, those whose tribulations go unnoticed are the same people: so the children who grow up in foster care because their parents couldn’t manage face a statistically far higher chance of ending up in the criminal justice system, or suffering poor health leading to reliance on benefits.
Current and former ministers as well as the MPs who voted through legislation must be held accountable for a litany of failures that amounts to an abandonment of their responsibilities to some of the most vulnerable people in the UK. Some ameliorative measures have already been taken, for example in adjustments to the legal aid rules. Politicians can be mistaken. Now is the time for them to change.
Owl says: what did you expect from this government?
“The head of the Commons standards watchdog has resigned and accused parliament of “sacrificing transparency” by banning the identification of MPs who are under investigation.
Sir Kevin Barron announced yesterday that he would step down next month after eight years of chairing the standards and privileges committee. “I am proud of the changes made to the code of conduct over the years, including the recent introduction of a new system of investigation into bullying and sexual harassment,” he said. But he took a swipe at his fellow MPs, adding: “It is a shame that some of those changes had to come with the sacrifice of transparency.”
In July members voted in favour of plans to keep secret the details of all MPs under investigation. The change was part of reforms being pushed through in response to reports of sexual harassment and bullying at Westminster.
Sir Kevin fiercely opposed the motion, describing it at the time as a “step backwards in transparency”. Lay members of the committee said that the move was “a detrimental step in continuing to build the credibility of the reputation of the House”. Less than two hours after the vote passed, the parliamentary standards commissioner had removed the list of current inquiries from its website.
Since 2010 details of MPs under inquiry, as well as rulings, have automatically been published. The new rules mean that the commissioner will no longer automatically publish verdicts.
Sir Kevin said: “I feel that now is an ideal time for me to move on and focus on other projects.” He commended the work of the lay members of the committee.
Jeremy Corbyn was reported to the standards commissioner last month for allegedly failing to declare his contentious trip to Tunisia or reveal who paid for it. If the commissioner were to rule that he broke Commons rules on declaring an overseas trip, he would have to apologise to MPs. Under the new system, however, the public would not automatically know of the details of the investigation. A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn has said: “The cost of the trip did not meet the declaration threshold.”
Source: The Times (paywall)
“Almost 1,000 elderly people a day are being admitted to hospital needlessly amid a crisis in social care, Age UK has found.
Analysis of NHS figures by the charity found that there were 341,074 avoidable emergency admissions for people aged 65 and over during the year to April 2017.
The number has risen by 107 per cent since 2003 for those aged 65 to 69, and by 119 per cent for older people aged 75-79.
Among the general population of England, the number has risen by 63 per cent.
The figures relate to admissions because of conditions such as ear, nose or throat infections, kidney and urinary tract infections, and angina, for which hospitalisation could potentially have been avoided had the person been better looked after.
Many older people rely on family and friends to help them in the absence of reliable social care, the charity warned.
One in three over-65s live alone, and one in ten have no children, and these figures are expected to rise as younger generations, who are less likely to have married or had children, reach retirement age.
Many of those who do have loved ones to care for them rely on elderly relatives who may have health problems of their own.
One case study highlighted by the charity involved a 67-year-old woman who has been a carer for 40 years, first for her parents and more recently for a younger sister who has Alzheimer’s disease.
In another case a 73-year-old woman has been the sole carer for her 75-year-old husband since he had a stroke and brain haemorrhage four years earlier. She cancelled previous at-home care because it was “unreliable and lacking in continuity”.
Its report also highlights the problem of older people stuck in hospital and unable to go home, putting more strain on the healthcare system.
Care not being in place was the main reason there were delays for older people leaving hospital in England last year, according to figures released by the NHS. …”
…”The poorest fifth of families would have to set aside more than 40% of their total weekly income after housing costs to satisfy the requirements of the government’s Eatwell guide, the study finds. …
The study estimates that 47% of all UK households with children do not spend enough on food to meet the Eatwell cost targets, a proportion that rises to 60% for single parent families. Just 20% of households where the main earner is unemployed spends the recommended amount, it estimates.
The costs of healthy eating fall disproportionately on the poorest half of the population, for whom a healthy balanced diet would account for nearly a third of disposable income on average, the study finds. This compares with an average 12% of disposable income for the wealthiest half of households.
Households in the lowest two income deciles – earning less than £15,860 a year – would need to spend 42% of their income after rent, while those in the top 10% of incomes would need to spend just 6% of their disposable income, the researchers estimate. …”
East Devon Watch 