Council Tax Recovery and the use of Bailiffs:

This is an issue that has affected our enquirers for many many years. We have worked closely with the City Council to persuade them to adopt a more proportionate and realistic approach where council tax arrears are caused by poverty and not a refusal to pay. Accepting that the local authority has a duty to collect the council tax as efficiently as possible, nevertheless where their practices will only make debt problems worse we believe we have a duty to challenge those practices.

The Social Security System:

Over the last year or so we have monitored a number of issues relating to the DWP’s administration of benefits. These have included the lack of provision of interpreters with Job Centre Plus offices, access to crises fund loans by the telephone claim line and problems and delays in contacting DWP staff to raise issues on existing claims. All of these issues had been relayed back to relevant Job Centre staff with whom we enjoy good working relationships and are pleased to say we have noted a number of improvements in most of these areas. While it must be said that the capacity issues around claiming benefits and contacting DWP staff have been addressed by the department recruiting additional staff nonetheless while these staff were recruited and trained the number of claimants experienced serious problems and delays.

We have also monitored closely the quality of Personal Capability Assessments conducted by medical staff working for an external contractor to the DWP. As mentioned elsewhere in this report the poor quality of these reports has caused many people, especially those experiencing mental health issues to have their benefit stopped only for it to be reinstated on appeal. There appears to be serious systemic problems in the PCA assessment which are causing grave hardship to many people who experience serious ill health. We are extremely concerned how this will translate into the new Employment Support Allowance where the test is far tougher.

We have also monitored and fed back our experience of people who we believe have been wrongly accused of benefit fraud. In particular, we have been concerned about the cases where the department decides that someone is no longer entitled to Disability Living Allowance because their care needs have reduced but they have not notified this change of circumstance to the department. Often this has been because the claimant is unaware of the complex qualifying conditions for Disability Living Allowance or they themselves are unaware that their needs have changed from what they described in their claim, as such changes are often very gradual.

It is our view that in many of these cases although there may no longer be an entitlement to benefit, the failure to notify a change in circumstance has not been deliberate and it is difficult to see how a criminal offence can have been committed.

United Kingdom Border Agency Services to People Seeking Asylum:

We have monitored the practices of at least one of the UKBA’s contracted accommodation providers who we believe is offering a very poor quality of service to their tenants both in terms of the quality of the accommodation they provide and the standards of housing management. We have responded to allegations of a very serious nature against their staff which we have also referred back to UKBA. We have also taken up issues with UKBA concerning the delays in issuing Integration Loans, the very poor publicity they issue around additional maternity payments and the lack of vouchers issued for supermarkets which stock Halal meat. In each of these cases we have achieved a measure of success in persuading UKBA to change their practices.

National Campaigns:

We have also contributed evidence to a number of national initiatives which Citizens Advice has pursued. One of which was to highlight the plight of private tenants at risk of losing their home because their landlord has failed to pay their mortgage.

‘Adding Up’ – Campaigning for lower school costs:

In August 2008 a group of young CAB volunteers ran a local campaign to make parents and schools aware of the national Schools Admission Code, which states that no family should feel unable to apply for admissions on account of high cost of uniform, kit and any other specialist equipment.

The young volunteers prepared display boards highlighting the problem before attending a Fun Day at the Treehouse Centre in Bentilee and running a market stall in Hanley town centre to speak parents who were in the process of buying uniforms for their children.

We spoke to over 100 parents at the two events and the campaign struck a chord with many who were busy shopping for uniforms that could only be purchased in specialist uniform shops. The parents told us that although supermarkets and chain stores were selling uniforms for less than £20, many of the local schools insisted that parents bought items with the school’s name embroidered on to all items including PE Kits.

The cost of school trips was also a great concern for parents especially those with more than one child in the school and some parent said that many trips including the trips to the seaside were considered to be an essential part of the curriculum.

V Project Co-ordinator Tina Mendolia who worked with the young people said, ‘It was incredible to hear the amounts that people were being asked to spend on one child, some of the uniforms were over £200 in total. Many low income families told us that they had to take out a loan to cover the cost.’

The parents were given post-cards to send to their schools to remind them of the school admissions code and to ask them to consider this when deciding on uniform requirements for the schools.

This is part of a national campaign the CAB service is running to highlight this issues, which is even more acute in a time of recession.