Chapter Twenty-Seven - Claims and Payments

Monday 27th November

'Morning All!'

Toby often missed his former colleague, Tricia Williams-Ellis, but never more so than in the aftermath of a stunning victory for his team.  Their arch rivals, the hated Pompey, had beaten Plymouth Argyle, which would have been some consolation for Tricia.  She, Steve and the girls were now living on the outskirts of Croydon.  They stayed in touch, personally and professionally, sharing family photos on Facebook and horror stories about the Benefit Cap and what Full Digital Service UC was doing to her Housing Association's rent arrears and worse, their ability to house families in need at all.  It was a classic Catch 22.  They had larger flats and houses, three and four-bed properties, empty.  They couldn't use these to house smaller families, as the Bedroom Tax would leave too big a shortfall between the rent due and what Housing would cover.  They couldn't house the most desperate larger families either, because they were clobbered by the Benefit Cap and often due even less Housing Benefit than the Bedroom Taxed families.  This left the most vulnerable households trapped in temporary accommodation while slightly better-off people were accommodated, but these people often also needed help to pay their rent.  So they claimed Universal Credit, Housing Benefit no longer being an option.  If they were lucky, they got a month’s rent included in their first payment, six weeks later.  Often they waited longer and, by the time they had settled their other debts from waiting, they had less a month’s worth of rent money left and more than two month’s rent to pay.  If the Housing Association asked for ‘alternative payment arrangements’ to recover arrears, their tenant’s rent was paid direct, along with twenty-percent of the rest of their UC.  If the Housing Association took them to Court, the tenant had three hundred extra pounds of costs added to their debt.
    Tricia hated her tenancy support officer’s job; there was so little she could do for her tenants.  Steve hated his, as her area housing manager, even more.  Neither had expected their supposed promotions to be so stressful.  Both were looking for alternatives and a chance to move back to the coast, as soon as their daughters had finished school.

Tricia’s successor, Deepak, was a good bloke but he wasn’t into football.  He missed his cue to congratulate Toby on his team’s success.  Hilary and Martin were puzzling over something together.  Ashley looked to be listening in.  

Tom, who was doing a reception shift as Vaughan - and Jim - were on holiday, appeared from the kitchen with a tray of hot drinks, including a tea for Toby.

‘I take it you’re celebrating,’ he said.

‘Great result.’  Toby raised his mug.  ‘Cheers!’

‘Are you expecting many for the clinic?’

‘It’s Monday, mate.’

Monday was the busiest day for those without home computers and smart phones who came in to check their mail and chase late payments.  There would be new claims too.  Deepak had offered to lend a hand, as Catherine wasn’t expected in until later in the week, to start her paid shifts.  Ashley was sitting in on a complex case interview with Hilary.  Martin was seeing drop-in callers.  

Toby checked his email, flagged a couple of items for attention later and went through to set up the computer room.  A few moments later, someone tapped on the door.  Toby looked up as Catherine came in.

‘Hello!’ he said.  ‘We weren’t expecting you in today.’

‘You’re always so busy on a Monday and I don’t have anything important to do at home.  I thought I’d see if you could do with a helping hand and, if not, do some reading up ready for later in the week.’

‘That’s great.  You’re always welcome.’  Toby hadn’t considered, until now, that it might also be cheaper for Catherine to come in by bus and have a free meal at the café rather than keep the heating on at home.  If so, he didn’t begrudge her a lunch and comfort. 

‘Deepak’s on standby but I’m not going to send you home.  There’s probably going to be enough to keep us all busy.’  Toby stood up and walked to the next desk to log on another PC.  ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you until Thursday.’

‘I’ve just been talking to Martin about a possible change of plan.’

‘Really?’  Toby wondered if she had been offered a full-time post elsewhere.

‘I thought it might help if I worked three shorter days, rather than two seven-and-a-half hour ones,’ Catherine said, almost as if she needed his approval too.  ‘It means I can share a day in with Martin, so we can swap notes about anything we work on together, and I can be home soon after the girls get in.’

‘I suppose that does work better, for all of us.’  He set up the last machine.  ‘Alternatively, you could train your girls to cook dinner on work days, so you can put your feet up when you get in.’

‘They’re still rather young to be trusted with that,’ Catherine replied.  ‘And they are used to having me at home.’

‘Of course.’  He was sure that after the trauma of losing their father, Catherine’s daughters appreciated her presence.  ‘How are they coping these days?’

‘They’re great, most of the time,’ she said with a smile.  ‘They fight like rats in a sack, but don’t all teenage siblings?’

‘I don’t know.  Mine haven’t reached that stage yet.’

‘You wait until they do; you’ll have more sympathy for referees!’

Toby laughed.  It was good to see her so upbeat.  It wasn’t that she had been gloomy before, but she had often seemed preoccupied and uncertain of herself.

‘It will be good to have a wage,’ Catherine admitted suddenly.  ‘The girls have been missing out on so much their friends take for granted.  I’m sure that’s where a lot of the arguments start.  They were used to having the best of everything, when their father was alive.’

‘I’m sure they still get the best you can give them.’

‘I hope so.  They’ll be able to have a little more this Christmas than I thought I could manage this time last week, thanks to all of you.’

‘It’s hardly charity, Catherine,’ Toby answered.  ‘You’re working for us!’

Soon she was, too.  Toby had been right to plan for a lively session.  A clutch of familiar faces arrived as soon as they were open and took what had almost become their regular seats.  Some had nothing to worry about.  There were no urgent instructions or warnings from their work coaches, just acknowledgments of tasks completed and gentle coaxing to keep up the good work.

Others were not so lucky.  An hour or so after the clinic started, Catherine asked her colleagues’ advice.

‘How long are UC sanctions meant to last?’

‘It depends what it’s for,’ said Deepak.

‘And if there have been any others in the last year,’ Toby added.  ‘It’s all in the CPAG book.’

‘Thanks.  I’ll see if I can work it out.’  

Catherine picked up the copy they kept in the room and went back to talk to the woman she was assisting.  Toby monitored the conversation between them as best he could while assisting his own client.  It appeared that the woman had missed an appointment with her work coach and the sanction arose from that.

'I changed my phone,' she explained.  'I'd run out of money, so I sold it and got a cheaper one when my next payment came through, but I forgot to tell my work coach.  I only saw the message about the meeting when I got the new phone and checked my account.  I'd missed it.  I explained why but she still sanctioned me.  I can't manage, even on hardship money, so I sold that phone too, so it'll happen again, won't it?'

Toby had a feeling it would keep happening and that the woman would keep spiralling further downwards.  She didn't sound especially bright.  He doubted she got half the money back from selling her phones as she'd spent buying them.  She was acting out of panic and sheer desperation.  Someone would be taking advantage of that.  

'We do three IT clinics a week here, if you want to get on a computer,' Catherine explained.

'I know.  The priest told me when I came in for the foodbank.'

Toby found something particularly depressing about the routine way she said this, the way in which foodbanks had become part of everyday life, taken for granted as the back-stop of a failing Social Security system.  He liked Father Cornelius immensely and he knew how strictly he policed his team of helpers, to prevent them patronising or evangelising at their guests, but the very idea that people in a twenty-first century developed nation had to rely on churches and charities for food appalled him, and his colleagues.  The public in general, however, seemed to take it for granted, maybe because it was easier to drop a spare tin of beans in the collection trolley at Tesco's than to lobby for decent benefits and a fairer system.

'How long has your sanction been running?' Catherine asked.

'Four months.'

'That doesn't seem right.  Are you sure the earlier deductions weren't for something else - a direct payment for a debt, the previous sanction...'

'No.  I had normal money for two months.'

'Can you log in to your account for me?'

'Excuse me, mate...?'  

Another customer needed assistance.  Toby went to see what the problem was, so he missed the next part of Catherine's conversation.  By the time he had his man logged in and safely managing his claim, Catherine was urging her client to consider a late appeal.

'If I upset them, they'll keep sanctioning me!'

Toby had heard this before.  People were terrified to exercise their rights, fearing that it would only lead to more hassle and hardship, so unreasonable sanctions and bad decisions went unchallenged.  Under the old regime, before UC, they just about scraped by on food parcels and hardship payments to the end of their sanction, except those who dropped out of the system entirely.  There was a sting in the tail for sanctioned UC claimants, however, which Catherine's client had evidently just discovered.

'I can't survive the winter on this!'

Her UC hardship payments, unlike their JSA counterparts, were a loan.  As soon as she reached the end of her sanction - which she had the previous month - they started to be recovered from her regular payments, cutting her income by almost as much as her sanction.

Toby eavesdropped again as she poured out her troubles to Catherine, heedless of the room-full of other people.  The woman was a lone parent.  Her kids were at infants school, one so young he was in the reception class.  She was getting treatment for her mental health.  She had a conviction for shoplifting.  She had been terrified of going to prison and having the kids taken off of her.  Her prospects of employment, certainly in the short-term, were somewhere between virtually hopeless and non-existent.  Toby could see this pattern repeating month after month, year after year.

'It's the criminal record that messes it all up,' she explained.  'I used to get interviews for care jobs and cleaning, but not since that.  It was stupid but I had nothing, nothing at all...'

Catherine led her client out of the room when she started to cry.  Toby waited a couple of moments before going to check on them.

'Catherine and her lass are in Lyn's usual room,' Tom explained, as Toby stepped into the corridor.  'Catherine's made her some tea.  I think she has the situation under control.'

'Okay.'

Realistically, the situation wasn't under control at all.  In a fair society, Catherine's client wouldn't have be a jobseeker.  If the state wanted her to 'do something' for her benefits, it would make more sense to let her go to school with her kids and catch up on the education she seemed to have missed in her youth.  He couldn't pin the blame for that on the Tories; it was his own party that had started the trend to pushing lone parents back into work.  The Coalition and the UC regulations just continued the trend.

Catherine came back into the IT room just after midday, timing her return well as a couple of late arrivals needed help to check their accounts and another, pitched off of ESA, needed help with a new claim.  Toby took on this task.

'If you want to have an early lunch, Catherine, I think we're doing okay now,' he heard Deepak offer, as the numbers started to thin out.

'I'm fine.  I had a good breakfast.  I'll have something later.'

'As long as you are quite sure...'

'Absolutely.'   

She kept an eye on the couple of clients still updating their activities.  

When Toby had finished with his new claim guy and warned him he would need to ask for an advance if he needed funds this side of Christmas, he called time on the session.

'Lunch now?' he asked Catherine.

'There's something I want to check up on, back in the office,' she said.  'You go on in.'

Toby guessed she might be reading up on UC sanctions.  She seemed keen to hit the ground running when she started officially at the end of the week.  He started to wonder if the project could organise payment of her wages to make the best use of the UC work allowances, without alerting her to the fact that they were making special arrangements. 
The more she knew, the harder that might be.