Forum Home → Discussion → Access to justice and advice sector issues → Thread
DWP - Have they ever been late in a benefits payment?
Malcolm Whitehouse - the UC Programme Director - spoke at the National Housing Federation conference yesterday.
He was being questioned about the implications of the loss of direct payments of housing costs to HAs and one delegate asked a straightforward question.
If they have tenants who set up direct debits to the housing association for
their rent, what would happen of their benefit wasn’t paid into their account on time.
He answered that “the DWP had never not paid a claimant on time”.
I have a vague memory that I may have, once, heard a rumour that this might, just possibly, have happened a long time ago, probably under unusual circumstances, to one person.
Am I right?
ps. He also totally avoided answering my question. He said, 3 or 4 times, in his presentation that people would always be better off in-work under Universal Credit. When I pointed out that someone paying mortgage interest of £100 a week who took a p/t job paying £30 would end up with at least £70 a week less income and did that count as ‘better-off’; he just said that there would be a calculator available to tell them what they’d get.
Are they all high?
Gareth, are his remarks “on the record”? I share an office with someone who volunteers at a local food bank. Her figures on why people have been referred to the food bank paint a rather different picture and she would like to draw attention to this!
Tee-hee!
Within the past five years:
1. Client was supposed to get paid into her account a day early because the JC was closed for christmas. She was not paid early, but nearly three weeks late, when the office opened again.
2. Client obliged to sign on by post, after he was barred from the JC for getting aggressive with the staff. Payments always one, two or three weeks late (which led him to ignore the ban and go back into the JC to hassle the staff about his missed payments!)
3. Unfailingly, clients who report a change of circs, even where still entitled to benefits, find that the next payment due is held up.
The polite description is, I believe, “being economical with the truth.”
Carol
It was a session witha couple of hundred people. I don’t know if it was recorded but I’d suspect so. It certainly wasn’t confidential.
“the DWP had never not paid a claimant on time”.
The use of a double negative shows that the man doesn’t even have a grasp of good English grammar. He’ll be splitting infinitives next.
Cardiff Foodbank say that since April 2012, 40% (431 people) have been referred because of delays in their benefit payments; 183 (17%) have been referred because of changes to their benefits which have caused delays or a reduction in income.
“the DWP had never not paid a claimant on time”.
Calling that ‘enconomical with the truth’ is itself being economical with the truth :)
It’s reasonable to assume that the programme director of the biggest shake up in social security for decades understands the social security system quite well. In which case, this sentence is just a bare-faced lie - plain and simple.
If it’s not a lie and Mr Whitehouse actually believes it, then 1) he’s living in cloud cuckoo land and one must wonder how on earth he secured his job with such misguided beliefs and 2) things will be worse than we already anticipate.
I imagine he also firmly belives that UC will come in on time and on budget!
This is too ridiculous for word. It’s such a ridiculous statement that it could only ever be uttered with the intention of deflecting attention form something else. What are we missing?
Its just a common response uttered by all narcissists. It is a statistical fact that a majority of bosses/people in power have borderline personality disorder with an overlap of narcissistic psycopathy. One symptom of this is that they are always right and never wrong about anything, and this attitude also applies to whatever department or organisation they work for.
I dont think he is diverting, he is just an idiot
Oh for Pity’s Sake.
I’ve just returned from 2 weeks leave and was having a reasonably good day until I read this. I feel like flushing my head down the toilet now.
Are you doing the poor man an injustice? He was asked a question; he didn’t have a clue what the answer was (not surprising, because I doubt anyone dealing with UC has thought about it!); he said the first thing that came into his head! I don’t think he believes it any more than anyone else does (or am I being too optimistic?)
You can of course argue that you should be able to expect someone in his position to think on his feet so as to come up with a better answer, or admit he didn’t know & say he would find out. But I suppose you can’t really expect the latter - it could be seen as committing himself to doing something about it.
There is a serious and important issue here. The most sensible way for a claimant getting UC to make sure their finances are kept in order is to have Direct Debits for rent, council tax, gas, electricity, water etc. coming out of their bank account on the day the UC goes in, or a day or two later. That is what I’d be advising a responsible claimant to do. But if the UC is late there will be chaos - rejected DDs & bank charges. I don’t know what the answer is but I can’t see DWP accepting any responsibility for the result.
Late payment (and part payment) of HB is already causing problems here in Oxford. We are in a pilot area for direct payment (to the claimant) of HB in preparation for UC. This is compounded by HB currently paid 4 weekly but direct debits for rent being monthly and getting ‘out of sink’.
This “out of synch” issue is a pain anyway, as so many direct debits are only taken monthly. So for those, monthly UC payments could help. However, a lot of social landlords still allocate rent to the account weekly so for them, monthly UC will itself create an out of synch problem!
Incidentally, I was amazed to be told recently by an energy supplier that they could take direct debits weekly, fortnightly, 4 weekly or monthly. If only they were all as accommodating!
There was also a presentation from the Oxford pilot where they seem to have got a lot of people onto direct debits but then taken the first month’s money on the wrong day .... and the second months. They said that they were processing the third months now but, surprisingly, some people seemed to have cancelled their direct debits
And their response appears to be ‘not our problem’ ... resulting bank charges ‘not our problem’ etc etc. To be fair as one of the social landlords involved they, unlike the housing association, are not sending firsts warning of eviction proceedings as soon as the rent account goes into arrears.
Guess what organisations are picking up the extra work generated by the pilot?