To not understand benefits of £7k a month!

[CoastalWave]

Awful story in the paper today (apologies, Daily Mail! But I'm sure it's in others)

Beyond distressing what has happened to the children (and the dogs) and I'm delighted this pair have been jailed.

But what also stood out, was the comment that they received £7000 a month in benefits.

How?

When my DH lost his job during cover and we only had my part time wage to live on, we were told that £1k a month was absolutely fine for a family of 4 to live on and we were entitled to nothing. Zero. Nada. Out of that £1k a month was our £600 mortgage, £200 council tax, £150 gas/electric etc etc. Basically there was no bloody chance we could live on £1k a month. We lost all of our savings and we're still paying back the debt we accrued now.

How do scumbags like this even just get handed that amount of money per month? And moreover, no one is bloody checking up on them clearly. Those poor children.

link

Can someone please enlighten me as to how these even happens/is allowed? What on earth is £7k benefits made up of? Are all families with 7 kids and not working getting £7k a month because if they are I'm sacking off work and popping out a few more children.

You're aware that claims have to be renewed/are reassessed regularly?
If the DWP suspect fraud, they will investigate it further.

£1600 a month mortgage the article says. Even the judge is quoted as asking how the 7k benefits was allowed to happen. It’s a fucking joke tbh. 84k a year. Having a laugh.

FFS this narrative that benefits claimants are all purer than the driven snow really gets my goat.

If you are self-employed then HMRC can, and regularly do, do extremely rigorous checks on you, including visiting your business premises and poring over every line item. But that’s fine, isn’t it? And as for the rich, they are all just terrible human beings, aren’t they ~despite the top 1% providing 30% of the entire tax take~.

But float the idea that that there are benefits cheats out there - that this despicable couple may have been gaming the system (by the fact of having 7 children at the very least) - and somehow you are benefit-bashing Tory scum. There are plenty of benefits cheats out there and I for one think it’s entirely right that there should be checks.

Oh dear, this thread is polarised.

is it allowed to be

a) worried about those poor children and
b) annoyed that some people get several times more in benefits than I will ever earn?

btw, My children share a room and our flat is so run down, I am working full time and constantly exhausted.

Can I be both or do I have to chose one?

So what would be wrong with HMRC popping round to yours every six months to check that you aren't a lying scumbag and cheating on your taxes? We all know that self-employed people are routinely "creatiive" with their accounts. There's a million threads on this site about that, never mind all the cheat stories in the press.

How does it feel to have the boot on the other foot.

My disability is between me and my medical advisors, who provide evidence of my disability. I don't want or need some snoop in my house checking out whether I (and my GP / consultants) am a liar.

Please don't try to make it about concern for the disabled - you aren't in the slightest concerned for us.

I'm fully aware the vast majority of people claiming will be genuine. So why are people so angry about the idea of someone checking ? If you've nothing to hide, no problem surely?

I think you must be standing quite far back tonight OP.

Let's try AGAIN.

THE CHECKS ARE DONE ON APPLICATION AND PERIODICALLY REVIEWED. MEDICAL EVIDENCE IS PROVIDED.

Now, I have been given a 10 year award before it need to be reviewed. This is not because they believe me it is because I have given so much evidence to back up my application that the decision maker is able to realise my disability is not going to change. 10 years is a MASSIVE award comparatively and I do not need to be treated like a fucking fraud because someone thinks all banality claimants are not genuine.

Erm I didn’t mention disabled people? Stop reaching. The judge has questioned the amount. Sorry but it’s a joke. No one should receive 84k in benefits.

Are you actually serious?

who are you suggesting comes to do these checks to ensure people are coping?

Do you realise how little support there is for people who need and want it? Yet suddenly there should be reams of people available to check up on people?

Fraud and error accounts for less than a whole percentage of benefit claims. The DWP’s own figures (bear in mind it includes their errors) put it at around 0.5%.
nearly 70% of people denied disability benefits who go on to appeal win.

But yeah. Let’s be outraged at the money (more so than the child abuse) and start splurging on inspectors to make sure those scummy disabled people aren’t all like these people.

FFs.

All of these threads recently are just ridiculous. Clearly started by government in order to stir up 'benefit hatred' . Just the the TV programmes that were put out in the early 2010s.

Most people on benefits can barely afford to survive. A single person on benefits with no children, after housing, receives £60 - £77 a week for all bills after housing. You ever tried to live on that??

They put out stories of these extreme outliers in order to justify not increasing the pittance by inflation.

Because you’ve already been through many checks in order to get the benefits in the first place?

The money spent sending non specialist benefit advisors to the homes of disabled people for the sake of I don’t even know what, would be much better spent going towards the services those disabled people actually need, and are desperately underfunded.

Disabilities don’t just disappear in 6 months you know, so what would the 6 month check actually help with? The government does not, and should not control how you spend your money. Entitlements are checking at the point of claim and at renewal intervals if appropriate. I cannot think how even more checks would help anything?

I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate tbh. Equally you can’t claim benefits towards a mortgage, although you can towards rent, hence why your claim was lower.

Around £8 BILLION a year is overpaid in benefits either by fraud or error. I am assuming the op didn't want this thread to turn into a nasty one, but there are huge flaws in the system.

If you are claiming disability , and you're genuine, why on earth would you have a problem with a quick visit to check how everything is going say 6 months after your first payment? Is it helping? How are you getting on etc

Because by that stage DH was actively dying and he wasn't a fucking side show to be checked up on to make sure he was a good boy and dying in a timely fashion.

Absolutely heart breaking for the kids and animals

yet after 5yrs one can have animals again

a Life ban for both to have animals and ideally both sterilised as well so no other kids

how did they fall under the system. No school - no dentist

to be sat in dog poo and by a dead dog

jeez that’s most poor kids 🥲🥲

Funnily enough I am assuming the complete opposite

Whose paying for that service then? There are thousands of people would fit that criteria.

I suspect that they were claiming DLA for some of their children, max award could be around £600 and then if child receives high rate then that could add additional £400 odd on to their UC or tax credits so potentially receiving £1000 a month per child. Article said they frittered away money meant for the kids.

I think that's exactly what OP intended, given the further posts they made.

I have no idea about the money but God, what a heartbreaking story. Those poor children and dogs. It actually made me cry reading it and seeing the pictures of the dogs. I don't understand how nobody could notice a normal sized house with 35 dogs in it, never mind 10 people! The noise alone must have been signficant, surely!

It's enough to make me think that mandatory home checks on all adults with dependents (children, animals or vulnerable adults) in their care wouldn't be a bad idea. Irritating and intrusive for 99% of us, yes, but if it would save even one situation like this, I'd put up with it without question.

Probably dla/pip, carers allowance , child benefit as well as UC

I’d love to see a link to that as it’s estimated in some quarters around 15-16 billion in benefits are unclaimed annually.
www.entitledto.co.uk/blog/2021/january/15plus-billion-unclaimed-means-tested-benefits-but-the-sketchy-take-up-data-makes-it-hard-to-say-for-sure/

The government themselves thinks that benefits go unclaimed - for example only 70% of pension credit is claimed

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/income-related-benefits-estimates-of-take-up-financial-year-2019-to-2020

This thread just gets worse.

Who is going to pay for these welfare checks of the millions of cats and dogs owned in the UK?
The RSCPA barely respond when someone reports actual abuse, let alone just routine checks of all pet owners.

In dla /pip renewals you have to say when you last saw your gp and consultant- they wrote to them for reports quite often so these children would have been seen by professionals - that’s someone checking . Were they at school ? there are already things in place but I don’t know the full facts of the case it must’ve been very complicated

I don’t think it’s accurate either, however you can claim (I believe it’s treated like a loan) for support for mortgage interest payments.

it doesn’t pay off the capital, but people can claim toward their mortgage after either 6 or 9 months on UC

If you are claiming disability , and you're genuine, why on earth would you have a problem with a quick visit to check how everything is going say 6 months after your first payment? Is it helping? How are you getting on etc?

Is it only for disability payments OP or are you also including UC, tax credits, child benefit etc. in your 6 monthly checks?