To be cheesed off with Universal Credit entry fees?

[MaturingCheeseball]

I know it’s been done before, but…

I thought I’d like to visit Chatsworth House with (teenage) dd. The cost is £33 each PLUS parking at £7.50. So £73.50.

Then I saw the universal credit/pension credit/pip etc price. THREE POUNDS. And free parking! So £6.00 for two adults (age 17+).

I do not have 12 times as much money as someone on these benefits. I doubt many people do. I’m not begrudging the disadvantaged a day out, but come on! The price differential is ludicrous.

When I saw the £73 price I just decided we couldn’t go, and so be it. But upon seeing the potential for a £6 entry, it made me feel mugged off.

what's the average UK salary? Under £40K. The vast majority of people then are earning not very much at all by those standards. What if they all gave up working? That's your average teacher, nurse, allied health professional, nursery workers, carers...all essential jobs for the good of society as a whole. Why are you trying to put them all down? Saying their contributions mean...nothing at all. Alright then. Let's all stop work if our contributions have no value, eh?

The government isnt paying the difference.
Chatsworth house (and others) dont fill in a form every month so they can claim the difference back.

If companies or attractions want to charge them less, and you hate the fact that people on uc spend " taxpayers money" on anything beyond bread, water, sackcloth and a cardboard box to live in then rejoice at the fact they are only paying three quid of Your Money rather than 33

Yes I noticed the huge price discrepancy when I booked London zoo (x5 tickets 😩)

I don’t begrudge the discounted tickets but the price gap between the subsidised and non subsidised really needs to be re-visited.

I know someone who doesn’t work and is on benefits etc - just been given a brand new ‘mobility’ electric car - retailing £47,000. Quite mobile in so far as they can easily walk their dog! Unbelievable in my opinion. What a drain on society.

Sorry you’re getting a hard time here, OP. I didn’t see your post as benefit bashing or jealousy at all.

If anyone actually read your post they’d realise that you’re frustrated with the massive price difference. I also work full time on a decent salary that is luckily above the threshold to not need benefit top ups. I live in a pretty low cost living part of the UK, and I would struggle to justify over £70 for a basic day out.

Of course these initiatives are good things, especially for children, but there needs to be a better balance when it comes to the price of things.

As you say, working full time without needing benefits doesn’t mean you have 12 times more disposable income for things like this.

I really don’t know what the solution is, but I agree with you completely that it’s not fair.

Have you not noticed all the people online that can and want to work talking about how they, their husbands or adult children are really struggling to find employment because businesses are struggling to afford employees, rising rents and energy costs as well as replacing humans with AI where they can?

You can have a benefits system or you can have streets packed full of homeless people begging you for money as you walk past, turning to drugs and crime because what’s the point of anything anymore, cramming up the nhs even more with the illnesses they end up with.

This is not backed up with any evidence whatsoever and makes no logical sense. All of the automation has been introduced under the current conditions, and where else do you think automation will be introduced? An estimated 90% of shoppers use self scan tills. The number of people Tesco employed hasn’t reduced substantially since their introduction because they have re-deployed staff to do online shopping orders and deliveries. We’re a long way off that all becoming automated, but even if they do, employment rates in the U.K. remain largely stable. The employment rate in 1861 was 75%, in 2026 it is….75%.

blah, blah, blah....

It's paid for through PIP. Because someone assessed that person as requiring it. Do report them if you consider they are claiming fraudulently.

Chatsworth is a registered charity. All of the money from tickets goes back into the running of the house.
(I used to work there. It still tells you this on the ticket booking page.)
If you book online, you get free parking.

In. Fucking. Deed.

Yet people on here constantly bleat on about the rate of disability fraud being 0.5% or something.

Maybe not stop working, but if our tax pretty much counts for nothing as pp is saying maybe we should be keeping 100% of the money that we go out and earn instead of having it taken from our pay packet and being handed back what's left over.

I bet they tell everyone they meet all about their personal finances and fraud as well.

Twas ever thus on MN.

The government has come up with a new scheme to import poverty. "Sponsor a Refugee".

Beamish is a year ticket. In County Durham. Great day out. And for local residents in surrounding area can visit often. When our children were small we went every fortnight.
They especially enjoyed the sweet making demonstrations and free samples and the free buses and tram!

How many concession tickets are available each day at London Zoo?

Whilst your post is perfectly true , its also very faux naive - you know quite well that there are thousands of people on UC who also work and therefore are not taking just 11k a year. These people are all also entitled to the cheap tickets.

Ahh the “free car” rubbish again. If (and it’s a very big if!) there is any truth in the claim by poster above that person will have had to pay a big down payment towards the car and the rest will be the mobility part of their pip each month

You are missing the point. Running a business is hard work and usually involves long hours. Working full time is also hard work and usually means you don’t have much flexibility. So you’d expect to at least be in a better financial position than someone who chooses not to work but claims UC and has lots of freebies and reduced costs (council tax, free holiday clubs in my area, and the list goes on). No one begrudges people with genuine disabilities on UC, but that’s what the safety net is for. The problem is that some make it a lifestyle choice.

And I agree with the OP that the gap in ticket prices for these attractions is ridiculous. We have a good income, but as a family of four we’d struggle to justify paying £140 for a day out and would need to make sacrifices elsewhere. Why shouldn’t families on UC have to make the same choice? They don’t need to pay full price, but maybe if their tickets were £10, everyone else could pay £25 for example. For us it’s the cost of a large weekly shop, for them it’s a tub of ice cream.

How rude.

I claim pip after having a stroke. I won't be going to Chatsworth house (or anywhere) as I am no longer able.

on the face of it, I look & act (walk, talk, eat) the same as prior to the stroke.

so how exactly do you think you'd 'sniff me out'

you wouldn't have seen the struggle to get there, the pain I'm in, my very restricted choice of food I can eat without help or without wearing it! You won't see the nightmare that going to the toilet is, or the clothing choices that make it possible. You may see a slight difference in my gait, but you won't see how painful each step is, nor how scary it is to walk around when you can't feel your feet touching the ground.

I could go on but im probably wasting my time with such a super sniffer.

This is the crux of the problem I think.

Why are the gov giving someone £800 to pay their rent - which is paying off a landlord's mortgage. This is just insanity. Surely people should be paying their rent from their own jobs.

If no one could afford the ridiculous rental prices, then we'd have lower rents and lower housing costs to start with.

Instead we have this system of the gov filtering money via UC claimants to pay off landlords houses.

People who have their own mortgages can't claim that £800. Why is anyone able to?

How did we even get to this? If someone is working full time why are they allowed to claim UC in the first place.

We pay tax without agreement to cover people’s entire lives (and their kids lives) because they simply refuse to work and will find every reason in the book not to (this is the case for many - not all - single parents for instance), so what difference does adding an entry ticket make in the grand scheme of things - we’re always being shafted by those that don’t pull their weight in society.

I do agree though for my tax to go to those in full-time employment and need UC top-ups, and I’ll happily pay for subsided tickets.

The Duke of Devonshire apparently has a personal fortune of £910 million. Get cross about that, rather than people on UC getting a cheap ticket.

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