Z2K Team before the walk

On Monday 20^th May a team of Z2K staff, volunteers and friends took part in the London Legal Walk. The Walk raises money for a wide range of charities and organisations to provide free legal advice. This year it was bigger than ever before with a record of 428 teams and 7,500 walkers, among them Judges, QCs, solicitors and legal advisers.

This year’s walk comes at a time when the government has cut the legal aid bill by £350 million a year, removing support for most housing, debt and welfare related cases. This will have a devastating effect on the ability of people in poverty to access justice. For example Shelter have said they will have to cut 10 of its housing advice centres in England because of an effective 50 per cent reduction in funding for the charity’s face-to-face advice services. It is in this context of growing demand and falling supply that access to free legal advice is more important than ever before.

The Z2K team were walking to raise money for our vital advice and support services. It took 11 of us just over two and half hours to walk the 10km around London (some slower than others!). We were left tired and blister ridden but our exertions were for a worthwhile cause. We have already seen a huge increase in our caseload this year and many of the benefit changes have yet to take full effect. We are pleased therefore to have raised just over £9,000 so far. But while this is an impressive amount it falls short of last year’s £10,623.50 and our target of £15,000 so if you haven’t already you can still donate here.

Part of the money raised will go to our Relief from Poverty fund which is used to make one off payments to temporarily help vulnerable families and individuals who find themselves with no other source of income through no fault of their own.

For example one of our clients had all his benefit taken away as a sanction for not attending a JobCentre meeting because he was busy attending a course the JobCentre had sent him on. We helped him to appeal successfully but this took a couple of weeks during which he had no funds at all. The fund gave him some money for food and fuel without which he would have gone hungry. If you want to help us to continue to support clients such as these please give generously.

The following is based on a real life example of one of our clients

Georgina is a single mother, having left a violent and abusive husband, with 3 children (aged 4, 7 & 10). When she was with her husband he was working in London so they needed to live in London. Now she is raising her three children single-handedly, through no fault of her own. She lives on benefits and relies on the support of local friends and family. Her ex-husband is not contributing in any way.

Her housing benefit was cut last year as a result of the housing benefit caps so, in order to remain close to her support systems, she downsized and now lives with her 3 children in a 2 bedroom flat at a rent of £330 per week.

She currently receives £591.73 a week in income support, child benefit, child tax credit and housing benefit. Prior to April 2013 this left her with £261.73 after rent, however she now has to pay £4.37 a week in Council Tax. After paying her energy bills she is left with £220 with which to feed and clothe her children and take them to school.

From 15^th July she will be subject to the benefit cap meaning her Housing Benefit entitlement of £305.77 will be reduced to £214.04. After she pays her rent and energy costs this will leave her with just £128.63 a week to survive on – an impossible task. What would you do in her situation?

I am currently studying Social Work at the University of West London but still live at home during the holidays. Under the new ‘bedroom tax’ regulations rooms occupied by students studying away from home are meant to be exempt. However Barnsley Council recently contacted my parents to inform them they would have to pay for my room, even though I am a full time student.

I called the council on behalf of my mum to inform them that the room is occupied by a full time student so could not be classed as under-occupied. They asked me to put this in writing, after which they then wrote back asking for seven pieces of information to prove that the room is occupied by the student. These included train tickets to prove the periods I had been at home (who keeps train tickets from 2011?!) and a list of all the times I have visited home since starting my course, where belongings are kept and post is delivered, what sort of accommodation do I live in at uni and what work I have undertaken during my summer holidays.They also threatened that even if the bedroom is exempt then they would make a Non-Dependant Deduction anyway.

Whilst I could provide the information they requested (with the exception of train tickets), this is an exceedingly over-zealous and bureaucratic process.  If they ask this information of all households with a full time student it must waste an incredible amount of time as well as causing anxiety, especially with the threat of having to pay a Non-Dependant Deduction.

In my case I am fortunate enough to be on  a placement at Z2K so I was armed with the knowledge that Non-Dependant Deduction do not apply to full time students, but someone with this knowledge may have been made to pay.

With all the doom and gloom coming our way it’s  no wonder we have seen an increase in the number of clients walking in through our doors. This year alone we have already helped over 300 new clients as well as continuing to support many more existing clients. This would not have been possible without the help and assistance of our trusted volunteer team.

We are a volunteer led organisation and it is our volunteers that support the majority of our casework here. Volunteers undertake a variety of tasks ranging from answering phone calls, taking down case referrals to preparing appeal bundles and supporting clients in courts and tribunals. Our volunteers love the fact that no two days are the same and they get to do exactly the same casework as the staff so no boring administrative tasks.

We are very grateful to all of our volunteers old and new for all their hard work, dedication and enthusiasm. Without them it would not be possible for us to help the sheer number of people that we do! If you are interested in volunteering at Z2K you can see the opportunities we have available here.

Z2K is currently supporting the third Annual Benefits Awareness Month campaign to raise awareness of the welfare benefits changes and encourage anyone who may be struggling financially to check what support is available to them.

As part of the campaign Turn2us has published new research* showing that those who could be in most need of financial help are not accessing the support available to them. The results reveal that 78% of people on low incomes who are currently not claiming any means-tested benefits don’t think they are entitled to any support. This is despite the fact that 22% had experienced a decrease in income over the past year and 11% had seen a reduction in their working hours.

The findings also suggest that the current changes to the welfare benefits system could further deter people from making a claim. Of those who are aware of the changes, 48% believe it will be harder for people to make a claim, and over two-fifth 42% believe that claimants will be worse off financially, once they have taken effect.

Although the media retains its focus on the very small number of fraudulent welfare claims these are dwarfed by the £19 billion in welfare benefits that sill goes unclaimed every year. Thousands of low-income families struggle to make end meet, either unwilling to claim benefits because of perceived stigma or ignorant of their entitlement. While benefits are placed under such intensive media scrutinty it is vital that those people are not deterred from claiming what they’re entitled to.

The campaign website features a free and easy-to-use Benefits Calculator that allows users to work out which welfare benefits and tax credits they might be entitled to, possible amounts they might receive and how to make a claim. The website also contains clear factsheets with up to date information about the benefits changes, with details on who will be affected, and when.

Benefits Awareness Month runs until 30th April 2013. For more information, please visit the website.

* Research was undertaken in March 2013 by Research Now. The total sample size was 1,014 adults with an annual household income of £20,000 or less before taxes and deductions who are currently not claiming any of the following benefits: Income-based Jobseekers Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit.

As part of the government’s overhaul of the benefit system, which came into effect at the beginning of this month, the Social Fund has been scrapped. This is a worrying development for us here at the NextDoor Project. Most of the clients for whom we find accommodation have no savings of their own and landlords invariably require one month’s rent in advance, which we have usually be able to obtain on their behalf from the Social Fund in the form of a Crisis Loan payment.

Elements of the old social fund, such as budgeting loans, will continue to be administered by the DWP, but crisis loans are now part of a bundle of responsibilities which have been devolved to local authorities. Obtaining crisis loan money from the old Social Fund was never easy, with call centers staffed by humans delivering remarkably convincing impersonations of robots. These generally pusillanimous creatures were clearly instructed to find any reason, however spurious, to reject an application. One particularly egregious example being when a rough sleeper who I had found a studio flat  for was refused a loan on the grounds that “He has been sleeping rough for eight months, which means that he is coping very well with his situation, and is therefore not in a crisis ”. A piece of twisted logic worthy of the original Catch 22.

Accessing a Crisis Loan under the old system may have been difficult, but at least one was dealing with one centralised system and one set of rules, however obtuse. Over time I had become something of an expert at navigating my way through all obstacles and of late successful applications were becoming the norm, not the exception. Now we are dealing with up to thirty-two London Local Authority’s, each with its own set of criteria and some seemingly without any coherent policy at all.

Even where councils, such as Kennsington and Chelsea (in consort with Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham under the new  tri-borough administrative arrangements), have got a system in place it is embryonic and there are teething problems and delays. We have been successful in accessing a payment from Westminster, which is apparently the first under the new system, but because the payment mechanism is not in place yet Z2K has had to bridge the payment, in order for our client to be placed.

I have even been told by one London borough that they will not be giving cash payments at all but food vouchers, which at the very least shows a total misunderstanding of the needs of the people for whom this money is intended. Many other boroughs are insisting on a local connection before they will consider an application.

The only good thing that can be said about the new system is that when money is given it is in the form of a grant, unlike the old social fund, which was a loan, and over time it is to be hoped that councils will evolve better systems, and a greater understanding of the needs of their clients. At the moment however, like so much of the governments wholesale changes to the benefit system, these changes are creating confusion and anxiety, with many unintended consequences and an overall impression that they have not been properly thought through.

Joanna Kennedy, Chief Executive of Z2K, was invited onto BBC News on Monday 15th April to discuss the new Benefit Cap that is currently being piloted in four London Boroughs. You can watch her appearance here.

Mrs T came to our offices in Autumn last year in a state of some distress resulting from the suspension of her Housing Benefit payments and demands that she repay some thousands of pounds.

Although originally from Uganda, she has lived in London for over ten years. She returned to Kampala in the Summer of 2011 for the wedding of a relative, but fell ill early into the trip. She already suffered from limited mobility, heart problems and the usual difficulties of octogenarian life. However, her condition deteriorated suddenly and she was admitted to the local hospital for treatment. She was unable to attend the wedding, and a week’s holiday became four months of being passed from hospital to hospital in hope of a correct diagnosis. She became increasingly disorientated and attempted on one occasion to return to the UK but was informed at that point that she was too ill to travel. By January 2012 she was given the all clear and returned to London within a week of being discharged from hospital. Continue reading →