Poverty in the UK: Case Histories
Poverty in the UK - Case Histories
Britain is an unequal country. One of the ways in which inequality harms us all is it blocks our natural empathy: all too often, when we have to learn about poverty, all we can see are the stereotypes about irresponsible, lazy scroungers. The reality is that people in long-term poverty are far more likely to be decent people struggling to survive in difficult circumstance. Far from being too generous, the welfare state often increases the pressures people in poverty face because, in our lack of sympathy the rest of us have insisted that Governments design benefits and services to be as parsimonious as possible.
In these pages we reprint a few of the case studies that have been collected by the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a charity that works with vulnerable households, trains volunteers to become McKenzie Friends and campaigns against the serious poverty they we meet in their work. (For more information, visit their website www.z2k.org )
1. Facing debt alone
The Local Government Ombudsman reports the case of Mr 'Watson', a single, semi literate adult living alone in Southwark. On 12 January 2001 CSL, Southwark's out sourced agent collecting council tax, sent Mr. Watson a summons for unpaid council tax of £235.10, plus costs, for a hearing on 9th February 2001. The summons contained the following, in bold type and highlighted:
'If a liability order is granted the council will be able to take one or more of the following actions:
a) Instruct bailiffs to take your goods to settle your debt - this can include your car.
b) You will be liable to pay the bailiffs costs which could substantially increase the debt.
c) Instruct your employer to deduct payments from your salary or wages.
d) Deduct money straight from your jobseekers allowance or income support.
e) Make you bankrupt.
f) Make a charging order against your home.
g) Have you committed to prison'.
His sister-in-law calls on him. His body is hanging in his flat. The police found the summons with him, paper littered with rough calculations and a note:
'Dear ... I at to do this I am in so much in Detr good By for ever Love...'
Jobcentre Plus had mistakenly told the local authority that they had cancelled his Job Seekers Allowance (JSA). That stopped housing and council tax benefits, triggering the blind, computer driven enforcement among numerous errors. Threats of eviction for rent arrears were not far off. JSA then was £53.05 a week after rent and council tax (now £59.15). The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has shown a national minimum income for healthy living for a single adult needs to be at least £84.76 a week or £125 in London.
2. Fined for truancy
A single mother with two children turned up at the fines enforcement court, facing a fine of £75 plus £50 costs. Z2K have a contract with the court to help people prepare their means statements for the magistrates and found out that the notice of the fine had been sent to the wrong address, the case had been heard in her absence and therefore without the Magistrates knowing the facts.
Her daughter was partially deaf and would not wear her hearing aids. It appears that part of the reason was that the School had lost the hearing aids: this never came out at the trial. The mother was in debt and struggling with poverty in a wealthy town; she was already paying off £38 a week shared by the Provvy, a bank and a catalogue company out of an income of £135.70 including child benefit that had to pay for everything other than rent and council tax. She also had a social fund loan.
Such lenders never check the ability of the borrower to repay the debt; families find it impossible to cope on inadequate benefits, and so like so many others, this situation spiraled out of control.
Z2K arranged for the decision to be set aside and the case to be tried again; she was acquitted. They signposted the family and the school to the Deaf Children's Society suggesting that the school should meet with them. The Education Authority refused to meet while the case was sub-judice.
A Parliamentary Question was asked by Lord Morris of Manchester about the punishment of deaf children for truancy. The answer made it clear that the Education Authority should have told the magistrates that the child was deaf, the mother unemployed and their home over 3.5 miles from the school with no transport. They should also have been willing to put the child's education before the sub-judice case and entered discussions with the Deaf Children's Society.
3. From welfare to work to debt to despair
After 18 years unemployed and looking after his three boys, without any assistance from Jobcentre Plus a lone father got his first job, maintaining council properties at £10 an hour. The Local Authority told him he could keep his housing and his council tax benefits; but two months later they told him they had made a mistake, put his rent account into £1600 arrears and started evection proceedings; they did the same with his council tax and put the bailiffs on the case.
Z2K arranged for the arrears of rent and council tax to be paid off at £25 a week each with a suspended possession order and the bailiffs collecting the council tax, but the £50 a week payment of arrears meant he was no better off in work than he would have been unemployed. He had a nervous break down and had to rely on sick pay of £86 a week - but the bailiffs insisted on keeping the payments for council tax arrears at £25 a week. Another intervention by Z2K reduced the payments for rent and council tax arrears to £10 a week each and restored his housing and council tax benefits.
He then received a letter from HM Revenue and Customs demanding repayment of over £2000 tax credits that they claimed had been overpaid. Shortly after receiving this letter he was committed to the local mental hospital for three weeks.
4. Official stupidity
'I met Jane helping her to prepare a means statement for the Magistrates at the Wycombe Court. The Local Authority would not move her and her five children from a damp two bed-roomed flat because there were rent arrears that she could not pay off. This problem had been bouncing around bureaucracies since December 1999 putting the health and education of the children at risk. The District Council was blaming the County Council and vice versa. We took the position that whatever the circumstances leading up to the present position it was the interests of the children that must be the over-riding consideration. They were on the at risk register.
'Jane is an epileptic and was pregnant with her sixth child at the time.
'It was arguable that the policies of the two local authorities was irrational when the relevant evidence of the mother's current circumstances were taken into account and the irrelevant evidence of events several years ago were not, on which there were no grounds to punish the children with inadequate accommodation at any time.
'It was also arguable that it is an interference with their privacy and family life constituting a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; see R v Forest Heath District Council ex Parte Lucas and West in which the refusal to house the couple on the ground that their council tax payments were in arrears was found to be unlawful.
'We suggested to the two Chairs of the local authorities that the matter should be decided by a High Court Judge in judicial review on the grounds the overcrowded damp flat was damaging the health and education of the children.
'She has now been moved to a three bed-roomed house, with Social Services paying off the rents arrears.
'HM Revenue and Customs doubted whether this lone mother really has six children; so they stopped her child tax credits and then sent an official to count them. This left her without any money to feed the children for three weeks. Z2K has a fund with which we fill in when welfare fails. We wrote to HMRC suggesting they might count the children before they even consider stopping her benefits, but had no reply.'
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