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.

Short term benefits I agree…but you’re missing the long term bigger picture. Full time working means you’d be paying more into a pension so helping yourself long term.

This is what people forget when they look at the short term. Long term there are more homeowners in the full time working population so they are building wealth, they have larger pensions etc.

People with mortgage do get a higher work allowance ( if they have kids or claim the health element of Uc ) though. This means the first £700+ of their earnings each month are completely disregarded before earnings reduce their total UC. I personally think for families where someone works it is a generous benefit, especially now with the fsm for all and the lifting of the two child cap. The standard elements have risen way above inflation rate this year and these work allowances keep going up. I get that they have to incentivize people to work but it's gone too far.

Lots of people on here are citing edge cases of someone they know whose terminal ill taking advantage of discounts when I think nobody here would begrudge that at all.

The real issue is that the welfare and benefits system should be a safety net - that’s no longer the case. What is happening in reality is that some people do have a more comfortable life with welfare handouts than those making their own way - even where there are no real barriers to them working. Rather than closing the gap, there are people who are genuinely better off claiming than working and that’s really sad.

I don't know why you're pissed off with UC prices. I'd be much more pissed off at them trying to charge £33 a ticket. How on is that justified??

I can see why they want to encourage people from different demographics, but I can't understand why anyone would think £33 is an acceptable price.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle.

thanks for the sympathy, very kind of you. Thankfully we can manage ok despite a reduced income. I still don’t agree that an adult who is earning £60k needs a 90% reduction on entry price just because they are in receipt of PIP. DLA etc no issue, if you’re not able to work due to illness or disability that’s a different matter.

Luckily our mortgage is small but we live in an area you wouldn't want to live. I do think help for claimants who have a mortgage should be looked at. Proper help but I doubt they will. I do have sympathy.

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.

Who do know who chooses not to work? Unless they are cheating the system (and we will always live among liars and fraudsters...thankfully they are few) you can't just decide not to work and claim all the 'freebies' etc.

Not sure - check the website.

What I do know - is that the subsidised tickets were only £1 for that day.

And my tickets were approximately £90 in total.

The whole design of the UC system is it pays to work. It’s not like previous where there was a cliff edge whereby you got it or not which did make it not worth it for some. With the UC system it’s a gradual reduction as you earn more but you are better off working than if you didn’t.

Really, how can you tell? I am fascinated

For someone who runs a business which nets you 5.5k per month you're not very good at maths.

The UC tickets are very limited, so it wouldn't reduce anyone else's ticket prices by a tenner. Someone posted upthread that only 2% of the tickets are for this scheme.

The people I know on UC make hard choices every day, I seem to know a different crowd to most of MN though where benefits claimants are living it up all day every day with free cars and wallpapering their houses with their free £50 notes.

It's bad for the soul to accept money for nothing, and bad for the morale of society. If people are disabled, that is different, Any of us could become disabled.

It's time the Govt forced people on UC to do something in exchange for their money.

They don't miss out INSTEAD

the people who DO benefit don't benefit at the cost of the children who still can't afford to go

Do ye aye? I’m not surprised you find it unbelievable.

A car of that value on the motability scheme would have a down payment of a few grand. There are virtually none on the scheme which would retail at nearly 50k. The most expensive one I can find currently available is the Volkswagen ID.5 (top spec retails about 50k) the down payment on motability for this is £7k.

A car of any value would reduce their benefits by £350 per month.

My daughter has a motability car. She can walk the dog. You know what she can’t do? Walk or get the bus to school, or the supermarket, or a job, or - pretty much anywhere really.

Ok. So part of their mortgages are being paid too then?

This whole thing is just messed up.

I though that years ago, income support was for people who didn't have jobs, were looking for work etc.

Now we have huge amounts of people who are working, often quite a lot of hours, being given 'universal credit' money by the gov? If they aren't disabled or ill or have children who are, why?? How did it get to this.

What would happen if it stopped tomorrow. Would large swatches of the country not be able to pay their rent or mortgage? Because if so then this is the issue. Wages aren't high enough/houses are too much and the gov is propping it all up.

So you manage by living in an area I wouldn't want to live. That would not be an option for me. If I can't pay my current mortgage I won't be able to get a mortgage to downsize or move to a cheaper area - not if I'm not working.
My mortgage is also not big, but it's a big chunk of UC.

I think this is fairly common. I have often read this on mumsnet and more recently my cleaner told me she knows 3 people who have all availed of a motability car and are defrauding the system while she can barely get by but gets nothing. She was talking about how these people fake it for assessments by using chat gpt etc to check what they should say to get the result they want. Especially for mental health conditions where it is easier to fake it.

The type of person I know who is on UC and would go to Chatsworth House fit into 2 distinct brackets:

1. they are on UC due to their own disability or that of a dependent after having worked and paid tax, or part of a couple where at least one person always has.

2. they are on UC due to low income and/or disability while raising children. Their children are unlikely to be fully dependent on benefits as adults but may be on a low income due because their chosen field is low paid.

Point being, it makes sense to keep it accessible for those on a low income to encourage the cultural enrichment and education of people who have a low income but are most likely to be able to gain some social mobility in the future. Or at the very least, help others around them achieve that goal.

I'm really not. I will never own a house unfortunately so when I'm retired I'll likely be supported by pension credit (or whatever the system is in 20 years). My private pension will only be used to pay rent and I'm really struggling to see the point of busting a gut for that.

Not saying I agree with the system, but that's a fact.

There is also a fair chance I won't live that long anyway.

Like I said I am planning to go back to work in September, but I'm kind of talking myself out of it with this thread 🤔

Think about the fact that the cost of travel to get there will be the same for those on benefits, and that there presumably are no concessions on things like cafe and restaurant prices which in my experience of Chatsworth are phenomenally high.

Ultimately it's a decision for Chatsworth's owners where and how they want to apply concessions. Feel free to write to them.

Have you any idea how much disabilities cost? The large majority of people on pip aren’t earning that though are they, so you are saying anyone with a disability should not benefit?
That could be a couple, both disabled and working on minimum wage, barely scraping by but they shouldn’t qualify?
the cost of my disability far outweighs the income I receive for it. I would swap paying full price into an attraction once a year than the £10000+ existing costs me

So to qualify for a motorbility car you need to not be able to mobilize 20m reliably on the majority of days Does the dog just go for 20m walks then? Or is she qualifying under the ' unable to do a journey alone' category?

You have to "educate yourself" 😉

So weird how they always tell people as well.

I can't decide if they are good fraudsters for scamming cars or bad ones for telling every randomer they meet.

New JSA pays about £350 a month, and claimants don't have entitlement to other benefits.

If you aren't earning 12x that, I'm not surprised you thought going to Chatham House was too expensive.