Mr Shapps,
I am a university student receiving housing benefit. Currently, this is not so much of an issue (ha), as I am a single mother. When my husband lived with me, we could only claim housing benefit during the summer holidays (July & August, despite exams finishing in the middle of June & not returning until the end of Sept), as we were told that our student loans should cover our rent otherwise. As a student parent, a financially allowance is made for some of the additional costs & 85% of the childcare costs are (currently ) paid. This is of course very helpful & I am appreciative that I am able to continue to study despite having a child. However, this left us having to pay for the rent on a 2 bedroom child-suitable home out of thin air. We have substantial credit card debts as a result.
Worse still is that the initial advice that I received from the 'FirstPoint' centre (on at least 3 occasions) is that we would be entitled to 'full' (if you can call it that) housing benefit throughout the year. We took this, after many reassurances, to be the case &, as complete newcomers to the world of benefits (me & my husband are from working families & had no prior knowledge of the workings of the system) we did not realise that we had to inform the government that we'd returned to university in the September. We believed that because it was known that we were at the beginning of our courses, that it would be assumed that we would continue to attend university unless we stated otherwise. We now realise that this is not the case, but were not told anything to the contrary (not at any time in person, or by letter, etc).
We (or should I now say I) am almost £3000 in debt from housing benefit 'overpayments' & lost the initial appeal. I have a tribunal arranged for the 23rd December (& can't help but wonder if that timing is deliberately awkward, seeing as this all started in April, I believe, when they started doing 'random checks') & have no faith in the system at all. I am losing money weekly as it's taken away in order to repay these 'debts', and when I finally graduate & get a job & no longer qualify for housing benefit, I will have to pay it out of my wage.
This system is unfair. I feel as though I am being punished for the incompetence of others (the professionals alleged to be the experts, who are paid to know these things!) because I did not have a working knowledge of the paperwork involved in claiming benefits.
Believe me, my situation is apparently so unusual that even the manager at the FirstPoint centre has given me incorrect information pertaining to the case (about how much of my student income should be considered in the benefit calculation), which has been illustrated by the lovely people at the CAB (& then thrown out of the appeal without any regard for the regulations). The people I have dealt with at FirstPoint have often been rude & patronising too, as though I am an inferior being due to relying partially on benefits at the moment. That alone is a disgrace.
So, after a lengthy rant (sorry - I've condensed it as much as I can), I suppose my question boils down to this:
How can you allow the vulnerable to be treated in such a confusing & disrespectful way? If we can't trust what we are told repeatedly by exactly those who are paid to know what they are telling us, why should we be punished? I am a highly intelligent (normally more modest than this, but I have a point to make!) literature student & I cannot understand some of the reams of nonsense which gets thrown against me in order to make me pay up for a mistake which isn't mine. Are you not ashamed that people, most of whom are more disadvantaged than I am - people who aren't as highly educated, some of whom are illiterate, even, are paying out of their own empty pockets because your system requires them to do so? I sincerely hope that as it seems inevitable that those of us on housing benefit are going to be receiving less for one reason or another very soon, that you spend some of that money on retraining the staff which put it into practice, because frankly they are rude & worse than useless.