Tag: ESA

January Blues: Extra bank and loan charges spark crisis for disabled food bank client

Clients at this London Trussell Trust food bank have few material resources to draw on, but if at all possible they still want to buy a few presents for their loved ones and grandchildren at Christmas.

But receiving her employment and support allowance (ESA)  a week earlier than usual before Christmas left grandmother Debbie without enough money to buy food this month. There wasn’t enough cash for that in her account when the standing orders came out. This included her regular standing order for a loan repayment to payday loan company Oakam. She had taken out a loan of £200 for Christmas presents at a mind-blowing APR of 676.6% to pay for Christmas presents. Oakam billed for one month’s repayment (£64, including £4 of extra charges) instead of two weeks (£30), with no warning, says Debbie, of the extra payment. How can Oakam seriously advertise on its website that it offers “affordable loans”?

She also incurred bank charges of £40 to Barclays for being overdrawn, which she says Barclays won’t reimburse.

Debbie is 49, and receives ESA because she has multiple, chronic health issues that leave her unable to work. Five years ago she was the victim of a hit and run accident, when she broke her ankle. This led to osteoarthritis in her knees and ankles which is spreading to her hips. She also has a personality disorder.

Debbie is also paying back money to Provident for another loan. She thinks she borrowed £150, but says that she believes she still owes £300 or so to them.

As well as providing her with three day’s supply of emergency food, we were able to offer her contact details for two debt advice charities in our patch -one of which is the fantastic Christians Against Poverty. They will be able to offer Debbie some practical support with consolidating her debts. Hopefully they’ll also consider contacting Barclays on her behalf to ask them how fair it is to pile bank charges onto someone who is in receipt of ESA and who says her problems were triggered by an early payment and a payday loan standing order that was for more than twice the amount that was expected.

Unsurprisingly, Debbie is also depressed. She has two bedrooms, the second of which is used by her grandchildren when they come to stay at weekends. Having them around means a lot to her, but her housing association (she’s in receipt of housing benefit) is putting pressure on her to move to a smaller property. Her house has been one of the few constants in her life, as she’s been living there for 12 years. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that even the thought of moving is causing her stress and potentially worsening her health issues. So why inflict that on her?

Why do we as a society stand by while the most vulnerable get treated in this appalling way? The truth is that many of us are only a car accident away from ending up where Debbie is today…..

Paying npower eats up most of my benefits, says sick Christine

If it weren’t for the food bank she’d be starving,  she tells me. A while back  she went without food for 11 days. Christine (not her real name) says she eventually collapsed in the home she lives in on her own. “I came to, got up, and made a cup of coffee.”

Her neighbour’s daughter told her about the food bank, and she went down to the Jobcentre to get a voucher. This time – only the second time she’s come to a food bank – she had to borrow the money for the fares and take two buses to get here. She’s 51, but life has not been kind to her in recent years and she looks much, much older. She says that four years ago she was “almost killed by an abusive partner”.

Like many food bank  clients who live on their own, her first thought is not for herself, but for her pets. She has quite a few cats. Luckily we’re able to find some cat food too. This relieves some of her anxiety.

Christine is a qualified silver service waitress. She says the doctor signed her off work about 10 years ago because of continuing problems with sciatica and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. She says that six months ago she was told to attend a medical screening in Croydon (most probably carried out by occupational health service providers Atos), and that following this she had been assessed as fit for work and her income support and disability living allowance were stopped. Why does she think she was assessed as fit for work? According to Christine, the person who carried out the screening had said she hadn’t asked to go to the toilet, and had also answered her mobile phone.

She appealed the decision to stop her benefits, but like many food bank clients she didn’t have enough cash to attend the appeal hearing and it went ahead without her.

After approaching the local council, Christine got help with filling out the forms for employment and support allowance (ESA), and she has now started receiving this.  She says the council did not give her help applying for Disability Living Allowance.  She gets £143.40 a fortnight in ESA.  But because she had such a long gap without benefits, she is on anything but an even keel. She says she currently has debts of £4,500.

She’s paying off the cost of buying a washing machine from BrightHouse – obviously paying a lot more than if she had paid cash. But her major challenge is her electricity bill. Her electricity is provided by npower, and she says they’re telling her she owes them more than £2,000.  She’s currently paying npower £12 a fortnight to cover arrears/debts,  “but the majority of my money is going on this emergency meter, and if I don’t have enough money for it I just sit in the dark”.

With her focus on feeding the meter, sometimes Christine isn’t  even eating. “I’ll put my cats first”. She can’t use the freezer, because of the expense of keeping it running and the risk of losing food if her electricity is cut off. She’s been told she can’t switch electricity companies until she’s paid off £500 of debt.

Why are we letting private companies manage the most vulnerable? As Jeremy Seabrook illustrates in his new book  Pauperland: A Short History of Poverty in Britain, “the richest societies in the world are still ready to impose punitive sanctions upon the least defended”. Anthropologists no longer need to head to the Amazon or Polynesia to examine a “savage society” when they could just get an airline ticket to Britain, he points out.

Young food bank mum sells furniture to buy food

Amanda (not her real name) sold her wardrobe recently to buy food for her partner and child. She’s 19 and a full-time student. By this stage in the week, most of her classmates will be looking forward to a night out. Friday nights mean a chance to catch up with their friends and perhaps even go clubbing if they have a bit of spare cash. Things are different for Amanda, whose hair is starting to fall out due to the stress of life with an ill partner and a four-year-old son.

She came to this Trussell Trust food bank in London today because her  young family has been without child tax credit for 14 weeks. The Jobcentre gave her a voucher. Her 23-year-old partner had been signed on with an agency, offering him irregular and very part-time work with the local council. But Amanda believes the worry of trying to earn enough money to pay bills and buy food in the absence of the child tax credit brought on the terrible migraines that have forced him to give up work.

Amanda says: “We were living off child benefit and whatever we could sell of our furniture. My partner was put on employment and support allowance (ESA) because the doctor said he wasn’t fit for work. The ESA didn’t start arriving until a week ago, but we only got one week’s money instead of the three weeks he’s owed. Before he got ill he worked through the agency as a park keeper and he also did removals for a while. He  had a low and unpredictable income.”

I ask her how not having enough money has affected them. “We’ve both lost weight, and I’m really depressed. It’s very hard to get out of bed in the morning. My hair has started to fall out.” She lives in a council house where water has started coming through the kitchen ceiling, and she’s unable to use the light in the room until it dries out.

She’s trying her best to stay focused on her course – a BTEC in medical science. She’s in her second year, and if she passes she can go on to university. There’s a great determination to do that, but in reality, some days she doesn’t have enough money to get to college. She is entitled to a bursary, but it only comes every three months. Amanda needs the money now. Amanda feels like her college is not giving her enough support. “They say you can go and talk to the finance office, but that’s a room with 20 people in it and there’s no private space where I can talk.”

Amanda, her partner and their child are battling to create sort of  future  in their sparsely furnished flat. Meanwhile we wait for the long-delayed report on food aid in the UK to emerge. Commissioned by Defra, it should help explain why there’s been such a growth in the number of food banks. According to a Guardian article, the suspicion is that the report has been held up because it illustrates a clear link between welfare reform and the growth of food banks. Welfare reforms are certainly not helping people like Amanda and her loved ones.