Universal Credit is officially a shambles

Five years ago I lost my job in a school following a false allegation against me by two students. I was initially suspended on full pay but eventually realised that without adult witnesses or appropriately placed cctv cameras my chances of proving my innocence were low and I didn't really want to stay anyway so I resigned. I was unemployed for 3 months before eventually securing employment at a lower salary for longer hours! I now get tax credits which bring my earnings back to where I was in my old job but I still work more hours than I used to! While unemployed I was able to claim job seekers allowance but quickly realised that my requirements to apply for enough jobs to satisfy the benefits people was completely unrealistic so I stopped my claim very quickly. The amount I was entitled to was not sufficient to live on anyway and I wanted to concentrate on applying for jobs I could realistically expect to get, not ones I was barely qualified for and didn't want anyway! I was fortunate in that I had received an inheritance when my mum died a couple of years earlier so I was able to make that choice to live off savings. Had I not been in that position I can't imagine how I'd have survived.
I can't imagine anyone choosing to live on benefits if they were able to get a job. The system makes life increasingly difficult for claimants by the requirement to meet targets of how many jobs were applied for. In one week I was sent 400 jobs which I read through and reckoned there were only 3 I could realistically get so if I'd continued on the benefit I'd have been wasting mine and the employers' time applying for totally unsuitable jobs which I stood no chance of getting. Most also required a significant commute and I was told I could not reject a job based on distance to travel.
Of course there are feckless individuals living on benefits, but most claimants are not and as someone else said it can happen to any of us. I never thought I'd be falsely accused of assault by two schoolboys but I was!

jocork, thank you for sharing your account of how you came to be on benefits and the inherent difficulties you experienced. Sadly those very, very few people who manage somehow to exploit the system seem to have become the stereotype, rather than the vast majority of people who are genuinely in need. Benefit fraud is a tiny percentage of the overall welfare bill, yet the myth persists that for most people being on benefits is a choice.
I know I keep going on about it, but please watch the film, 'I, Daniel Blake' for a true to life account of how difficult it is to negotiate the benefit system. If you don't have time to watch the film then you can read an article about it here:
www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/28/arrogance-poverty-social-housing-benefits-ken-loach-i-daniel-blake-unrealistic

In my experience there are very few people who choose to live a life on benefits. There are some who may appear to present in that way but they usually have mental health issues that make it unlikely they will ever be able to hold down a full time job. Pretending they dont care or dont want a job is a way to cling to a little self respect.

I realise that the Tories would like to kill off these people if they thought they could get away with it.

In reality most people on benefits go on and off benefits as they find work - short term contracts, zero hour contracts and other poorly paid work. They never have the luxury of enough cash to make provision for the next illness or losing one of those jobs.

There are unfortunately privileged people who are utterly selfish, lack compassion and have insufficient intelligence to recognise how fortunate they are and have been since birth. God help us when they form our government.

Thanks for the link, GA. I have worked in the benefits system from time to time and yet achieved only 40% in the quiz to which there's a link in the article.

It certainly helps separate fact from some widely held myths!

I too would recommend watching 'I Daniel Blake'. It confirmed everything I experienced and I sobbed my heart out for the last 15 minutes! Someone told me that it was shown in Parliament to MP's but if that is true they must have very hard hearts to watch it yet still persist with current policies.

Ian Duncan Smith is married to an aristocrat and lives in her stately home. He hasn’t a clue about living on the breadline.

How can these people profess to represent the common wo/man?

As a CAB advisor I see far too many people whose lives have been destroyed by the system. I have met only one person in ten years of advising who seemed to want to stay on benefits rather than work, and hundreds more who have been sanctioned by the cruel nature of the demands made of them as jobseekers, or utterly let down by mendacious assessors of the disability benefits to which they are so obviously entitled.
Why the government should trust the assessors rather than GPs and Consultants I do not know. The whole system of assessments is disreputably managed. Nobody would choose to jump through all the hoops if they did not need to. A very small number do manage to make fraudulent claims, but nowhere nearly as much money is lost to the claimants as is lost to the Exchequer by those with skilful accountants who work the tax system, or those companies who avoid UK taxation by devious means.

What a load of rubbish Quizqueen and Jennifereccles talk, i hope you never have to be in this situation, god forbid, people really dont choose to live on benefits, you have wached too many ch 5 programmes,
Do you really expect 40 somethings to live with parents for ever
My son had to do this for a while as he had several small strokes, plus other health problems, he eventually was given a warden controlled flat, but it has taken from last December to only last week to get his UC sorted out,in the meantime i have had to help him out
I think all these people who get on their high horse should fall off it now and then, and see how it feels to live in the real world

I read with interest all the posts on here and it occurred to me whilst much of the criticism is perhaps justified because the process of the the system is faulty as usual there are no clear concise thoughts provided from anyone on how to improve or change the system. I would have thought those who work with or those who have been affected by the system could at least put forward ideas on what should be done to make the system work/be affected. It was interesting to read in one post what some councils are doing in relation to taxing second homes. Not sure if this relates to holiday homes or those rented out. I can understand this might work for homes standing empty but small private landlords might be inclined to sell and not rent which probably would not help those people who can only afford to rent and not buy as this would mean less rental properties available. Many people blame the government but really it's the think tanks that act as advisors to ministers that don't have knowledge or experience, many of these groups are drawn straight from the top universities with no work or life experience except one of academia background. We all know there is a problem what we really need is to find good solutions, any good ideas anyone?

In Scotland we have made progress, although there is always room for improvement. We have a socialist government that actually cares for its citizens and carries out meaningful engagement and consultation on benefits and other issues ( as devolved powers allow)

The Social Security ( Scotland) Act will bring in sweeping changes, including assessments by qualified individuals and not managed by private companies.

Over 70000 affordable homes since 2007, the majority council or housing association.

Greed and corruption are at the heart of all too many UK gov. policies as far as I can see.

Four suggestions.
Alig99, I did mention when talking about disability benefits a veiled suggestion that these assessments by often incompetent assessors are inappropriate and it would be more effective to base a claimant’s eligibility of their GP or Consultant’s report. So many cases are turned down then overthrown by the Tribunals, where sense prevails. This is a huge waste of money. The system is set up to try to take people off benefits and the assessors appear to have this as their aim: to show that the claim is not valid, even to the extent of outright lies. They are not unbiased, like the Tribunals. They are paid to get results.
1) change the system of assessment. Trust Consultants and GP s.
2) Universal Credit is not working, so stop rolling it out until it is fixed. Leave people under the old system until it is sorted.
3) Pay Housing Benefit Direct to landlords
4) do not allow social housing to be sold off, unless it is replaced by two affordable homes, one of which must be for vulnerable tenants on the housing list.

Thanks Cabbie21.
Can I add, build more good quality social housing and stop the dreaded Bedroom Tax.
As well as giving money to the NHS (it's only what it would have got without austerity) please give proper funding to preventive services for children, families and adult services. That would be family centres, drug/alcohol/mental health /education/police services.
Find a way to encourage training medics to become GPs and stay in General Practice. It can't be impossible - it would go help in public services if the amount of bureaucracy could be minimised, rather than maximised. Just before I retired, people in my area of service were spending 80% of their time on lap tops, completing admin forms and 20% with the people who needed our services. Admin services had all been got rid of to "save money" so we were also typing/answering phones etc.

I'm afraid the solutions are ones the government would never implement. We have policies to encourage the building of "affordable" homes - they are not implemented because housebuilders claim development is "uneconomic" if they have to build them. Then they make massive profits. The loopholes have been known for years - like the use of offshore companies and holding companies for tax evasion on the profits.

Cut tax evasion and use half the money to build homes. Force companies to sell land that is not built on within a specified time - say 3 years - and the land has to be sold at the price they paid for it. They hold large land banks.

Introduce heavy taxes on homes that are owners by people not resident in Britain for tax purposes.

But that is wandering off topic. Many people on these so luxurious "benefits" have been paying national insurance for years in the expectation that they would get a hand when ill or losing their job through no fault of their own. This is partly an insurance system and one that is miserly in paying out. The system doesnt save money - it just pays out to heartless and incompetent assessors.

And - redevelop brown site land. I'm sure the north west isn't the only part of the country with endless empty buildings, warehouses and in our case, former cotton mills, standing empty, falling into dangerous disrepair. they're often close to town centres and transport links. Why aren't they the target for new build, rather than the few open green spaces we have left?

grannyactivist I have had to go through various claim forms for DH's benefits. I am well educated, I know I have a high IQ, but these forms are a nightmare! Pages and pages of questions, many are ambiguous so that you end up unsure of what you have said. How people with a poor education who may not be very literate manage I can't imagine. To then have them suggesting you are trying to get benefits you aren't entitled to just adds insult to injury.

Excellent suggestions from Cabbie and Iam, but I believe all have previously been proffered and ignored.
Deeda the ESA form is 16 pages long, the PIP form is double that. Job centres now have the expectation that all claims will be dealt with online and the ONLY form of communication used by my local job centre is via text message. So if, as is usually the case with my clients, the claimant has no phone, or no credit, or is unable to charge their phone they are often sanctioned for not turning up to appointments they don't know about. If the text message does get through then the bus fare to the nearest job centre is a prohibitive £8!

As I expect people will realise, this is about staffing Jobcentres with the minimum possible staff on the lowest possible payscales. To achieve this, HMG must put in place a process. This process will have little regard for anyone not equipped to complete the 30-odd pages of the form or use a computer.

When I worked in Jobcentres, admittedly nearly 40 years ago, they were separate from Benefit Offices and focussed on advising people about jobs in the local labour market and how best to get them.

We were trained Employment Advisers backed up by a Careers Service for youngsters between the ages of 16-18, and a nationwide network of Skillcentres providing fairly intensive vocational training with qualifications as an outcome.

Now it's all about cost cutting.

But the message from anyone who has studied this is that it isnt saving money, so not cost cutting. We are harassing the sick and disabled, driving people to food banks and all so that the private companies employing the assessors make a profit from misery.

So true, alreadytaken

When you receive the letter telling you how much JSA you are entitled to it also states "This is what the government says you need to live on."

So how come an MP gets £77,000 plus expenses PA? Are their 'needs' somehow exceptionally different from an ordinary member of the public?

it should say this is what the government say you can exist on. How many people would like to give a try at living on it for one month? You would not be allowed to take anything from your store cupboards during that time because those on low wages dont get much chance to have a well stocked cupboard.

alreadytaken I agree it's a hand to mouth existence and one that is so precarious that for people on benefits the need to replace white goods or furniture can create a major financial crisis. Living on benefits for a short time is doable, but long term it can be very depressing and engender extreme anxiety.
At the moment I am deeply concerned at the numbers of clients we're getting who are actually in work, but either on minimum wage or zero hours contracts. So many of them are struggling to pay for the basics that they're skipping paying the rent and because of the housing shortage councils and Housing Associations are being quite bullish in applying for possession orders.
At the moment we have so many homeless and vulnerably housed clients we're struggling to cope with the demand, but at least in our area there is a charity working with these people - in other places there is very little or no help at all.

my local foodbank have a Facebook page. This is a generous area and post Christmas they had good supplies. Recently they have had to ask for donations because their shelves were bare.

I'm pleased to say that when I dropped off some cans at a local collection box it was half full. Still people shouldnt have to rely on food banks.

Adding to the excellent posts by Iam64 and alreadytaken:

We need about 2 million new homes - social housing at reasonable rents. With the proper will this is not unachievable.

600 thousand properties are empty in the UK.
400 thousand plots have planning permission for homes but no start has been made
Councils have 33 hectares spare brownfield land - sufficient for 1.4 million homes, though obviously not all can be built on immediately.

The big property developers have enough cash reserves to build one and a half million homes.

But I don't think we'll see much action soon from this government with their friends in property development and landbanking! They seem bent on citing scapegoats and then punishing them!