Benefits - does this seem realistic?

[Ivy44]

I was giving our office cleaner a lift home from one day (we chat a lot and she lives on my way home) last week and she openly told me how much she gets in benefits, I was a bit taken aback by the amount she gets as I keep reading articles about people on benefits being in poverty, due to all the cuts. She is a single parent of two children who works 16 hours a week as a cleaner, the children are 9 and 13.

Salary - £550 per month
Housing benefit - £360 per month (covers rent on a 3 bed council house)
£180 per month child maintenance
£1,120 per month in child/working tax credits and child benefits

This is the equivalent of a 35k a year gross salary. This isn’t supposed to be judgemental as she’s a nice lady who does a good job for us but I am a bit shocked at how much money is available in benefits, given the articles I keep seeing about poverty, food banks, teachers having to buy food for kids who go to school hungry etc.

NoYo - Yes the claiming as a single parent whilst having a partner living with his mum round the corner and having 2 kids together is still very common round here !

I work in a different field (pensions) and we legitimately use tracing services to identify where a person lives and their circumstances (ie living with family/spouse/partner) which can then be supplemented by manual tracing work to obtain relationship status in over 90% of cases.

If DWP are not using these tools to identify the cases that merit further investigation then focusing resources on these I would be surprised.

donnadarko I've recently read the following article 'the-truth-about-tax-credits'. According to the article it is entirely possible for a family on tax credits to work very few hours a week but still take home an income similar to that of a junior barrister or doctor...

moneyweek.com/merryns-blog/the-truth-about-tax-credits/#.VkTRkD74WVY.twitter

On tax credits a lone parent can work 16 hours or a couple just 24 hours between them to claim working tax credits. On UC the work hour requirements are meant to be a lot higher/ stricter but in reality it goes more on income and if you meet a level of income ( which really is very low) they often don't make people look for more hours.

@Didyousaysomethingdarling the scenario outlined in that article (one PT working parent and a SAHP) isn't possible under the new UC regime that is now being phased in.

Sorry I meant to say can work those hours even when kids are teenagers.

Rubber - it is still possible on UC because the income level they set is very low so people could still work very few hours and not be pushed to work more. Nothing has changed.

AnnaFender

I wonder how you paid for your degree?

Don't worry she'll be moved onto universal credit soon enough and hit the good ole benefit cap

Dulcie - she will be exempt from the benefit cap because she is working and earning enough I think.

Rubber - it is still possible on UC because the income level they set is very low so people could still work very few hours and not be pushed to work more. Nothing has changed.

No, it really isn't. The example in that article is 24 hours of work per week, @ £7ph for one couple. (£7ph was roughly NMW when that article was published.)

Any couple earning NMW now, would be required to work far more hours than that, and they'd both have to work (disability or caring issues excepted).

You're right in the sense that if , for example, my CIPD-qualified friend met a personal and financial disaster and had to claim, she could meet the minimum income floor by working far fewer hours than the unskilled, NMW-earning claimant. But, for most claimants, who are largely low earners, the system has changed dramatically.

Rubber - In reality I see a lot of clients say that because they earn above a certain amount ( i think it is around £500 a month) they are not pushed to look for more work or are put in ' light touch' group. I think it is called the AET ? that they have to meet - earnings threshold ?

I think a lot of things about Uc that were published / anticipated some time ago really haven't come to fruition. In reality people can still work very little .

The bald facts of the matter are that house prices and housing costs became untethered from average earnings in the eighties and early nineties, and are now completely unaffordable for low paid workers.

Housing costs keep going up (a windfall for those of us lucky enough to own our homes and/or investment properties). Unskilled wages have stayed very low.

We need low paid workers to do essential jobs. Low paid workers shouldn't be struggling and hungry in slum conditions in a wealthy society. So we have to subsidise low wages (subsidise business).

UC expects all adults who can, to earn a FT minimum wage, and in return tops their income up to a modest but reasonable level. That seems fair to me.

@Babyroobs

I bloody hope she isn't hit as well! Because nobody should be.

I do always wonder on these threads that if it's so easy, and such a great lifestyle, why those shouting it's not fair don't do it? It's a genuine question.
I'd fucking love to earn enough to be out of tax credits and therefore able to fully support me and DD. I'd practically have to work 24/7 though to achieve it. Even poor scrounger bastards like me need a day off at some point. Sorry to burst your little sanctimonious bubbles but even benefit scroungers like me are fucking human. Dear God, don't deserve a wage enough to live on for an unskilled job yet making mugs out of Everyone because I need to claim to live?!
Try it. Just try it, for a week, a month a year, or until you realise your sole fucking purpose in life is making other people richer (your employer, the government, companies raking billions in profit and still putting the prices up) and you are grovel and bow and scrape to those people to survive, and woe betide you even dare think you might deserve a bit of a fucking life other than being a cog in a wheel!
Some of you people need to live this side to see what it's actually like.

AET & CET. Two earnings thresholds.

Yes, @babyroobs what essentially happened is that it belatedly dawned on everyone that closely supervising hundreds of thousands of working claimants, JSA style, while they endeavoured to increase their earnings, was an unaffordable proposition. So they decided that claimants who were already in work, and meeting the lower threshold, could be put on a light touch regime. An encouraging piece of pragmatism, really.

We created this economy of zero hours contracts and part time work. We chose to design tax credits a certain way, we decided not to institute a true living wages, we arranged to open the U.K. low pay economy up to all youngest, most mobile unskilled labour from the EU.

We created this mess. There's a limit to how much being punitive to the victims will help.

But "light touch" doesn't mean "no requirement".

I have also recently seen how much people can receive in benefits and it has really shocked me. The person in question chooses not to work but to be at home for her children who are in secondary school. She has no mortgage and receives generous child maintenance. I have been quite shocked how much support she also receives to the point where I feel really resentful.

Rubber - yes I agree the whole thing wasn't very well thought out at all but I do think the AET is very low. I'm not sure how much people have to do in ' light touch' group though - I think maybe the requirements are not much from what I gather.
I agree high rents are the problem. It looks like some people are getting huge amounts of Uc but very often it is going straight on extortionate rent.

Bearded - Yes it's those very situations that I find hard to accept also. I have a friend in a similar situation, chooses not to work and has an ex husband earning in excess of 100k and paying regular large amounts of CM. I just don't see how it's allowed. I do understand that for many lone parents CM is non existent or sporadic and those people need to be protected but in situations like this where CM is regularly paid and large amounts I don't understand how it is allowed.

I guess it will be a huge shock though when the kids leave education and the tax credits and CM all end abruptly .

I guess it will be a huge shock though when the kids leave education and the tax credits and CM all end abruptly .

Anyone with brains, health and gumption will prepare for that. Everyone else will hit a wall. Plus ça change.

I do not agree with everything the OP has written, but there have certainly been people who have had very nasty surprises when their youngest child turned 18/left FT education and they no longer qualified for most top up benefits. It's been a real problem. If any of you read the MSE forums, there've been loads of threads over the years from people in that position. Of course, UC tends to fuck people over way before that point...

"I feel like benefits knowledge is only ever viewed in a negative light. As though we should be coming to the system as vulnerable as shorn lambs and meekly accepting its judgement on us." Absolutely.

Having been in receipt of benefits and/or tax credits for 16 years now I've learnt (the hard way) a fair bit about how it works.

On occasion I've passed that information on to posters here. I don't do so on the public boards any more because of the appalling vitriolic personal attacks I was subjected to as a result.

You'd have thought I was recommending stealing food from children!!

There are benefits fraudsters but it's rare and the costs are minimal particularly in comparison to tax evasion - which is committed by people with plenty of money and no need to steal beyond sheer greed!

No system is ever going to be perfect but to target more resources on benefit fraud than on tax evasion, which is what happens, is a joke! Not least because it makes no sense financially.

And as pp said there's also the disgusting situation where without ANY proof a persons entire benefits income can be stopped instantly purely on the basis of a quite possibly maliciously acting persons, possibly anonymous word!

"you know fine well I can't give you statistics or data" I take it you mean you personally? Because the stats and data are available to look up they do exist.

"But, for most claimants, who are largely low earners, the system has changed dramatically." Exactly

People are literally dying as a result, coroners are currently fighting to get FOI requests and other data revealed to support their own experiences where they are seeing this happen. There's I think a few test cases in preparation where the families are seeking to sue over such cases.

"UC expects all adults who can, to earn a FT minimum wage, and in return tops their income up to a modest but reasonable level. That seems fair to me." The problem is most UC claimants aren't fit to work or at least not fit to work full time, or have caring commitments (and I don't just mean healthy children) and these claimants are being treated absolutely disgustingly!

"I do always wonder on these threads that if it's so easy, and such a great lifestyle, why those shouting it's not fair don't do it? It's a genuine question." Well of course they don't because they know damn well it's not the easy life they're claiming! I rather suspect a good many of them also know they wouldn't have the first clue where to start living on such a low income.

"Some of you people need to live this side to see what it's actually like." Totally agree!