Tag: Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty

Edinburgh claimants stop Jobcentre breaking benefit rule

Currently, benefit claimants on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) are being transferred over to Universal Credit. According to law the vast majority of disabled ESA claimants keep their ‘not fit for work status’ while being transferred over, and continue to receive disability-related payments.

High Riggs Jobcentre in Edinburgh was illegally forcing transferred disabled claimants to obtain a fit note from their GP and go through unnecessary ‘work capability assessments’.  A local anti-poverty group found out about this, through voluntarily accompanying benefit claimants to their appointments, and providing moral support.

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty is a community group which helps local people access benefits, register complaints, and voice their concerns over government response to the cost of living crisis.

ECAP held a demonstration outside High Riggs jobcentre on 30th September.

Four local claimants went in, delivering a letter for and requesting a meeting with the local manager. Jobcentre staff told ECAP that they were “unavailable”, and refused to give any contact details.

Local benefit claimants were told that staff would pass on the letter, and that the manager would contact ECAP the next day.

However despite this promise ECAP received no further contact contact from High Riggs Jobcentre, or the DWP.

A second protest was organised to occur at High Riggs jobcentre at 3PM on 30 October, a day before Halloween.

Members of the local community held placards proclaiming “Cutting Disability Benefits Kills”, and a protestor dressed as the “DWP Grim Reaper” brandished their scythe menacingly. Meanwhile an ECAP delegation swerved past security guards into the Jobcentre where they met the manager of High Riggs Jobcentre.

The manager admitted that the jobcentre had been wrongly telling migrating ESA claimants they needed to get a Fit Note. They told us that all High Riggs work coaches had now received instructions that ESA claimants migrating to Universal Credit kept their existing “not fit for work” status and did not need to go through another Work Capability Assessment.

The Manager assured ECAP that if there were any future problems a meeting could be arranged to sort matters.

If you are in this position and have problems contact ecapmail@gmail.com.

An ECAP spokesperson said: “This victory was only achieved by numbers of people mobilising and taking action”.

More information available at edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk
and in particular at https://edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk/?p=3463

Contact ecapmail@gmail.com

Edinburgh protest against cut to Universal Credit

Demonstrators gathered at High Riggs Jobcentre yesterday to demand the re-instatement of the £20 cut to Universal Credit. The protest was called by Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty in response to a call from Disabled People Against the Cuts for UK-wide protests.

Participants included disabled people, pensioners, workers and a group of school students.

Police attended but did not intervene.

The demonstrators denounced the UK government cut, due to be implemented from the end of this month. Protestors held placards with the hashtag #20MoreForAll, demanding the £20 increase be extended to “legacy benefits” like Job Seekers Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance.

Campaigners have raised alarm at the hardship which a £20 cut will cause to the six million Universal Credit claimants, who include the low paid, unemployed, families and sick and disabled people.

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty leaflets distributed at the protest quoted research by the Child Poverty Action Group.

The research reveals that over the last decade nearly 100 cuts have been made to social security entitlement and the value of payments has fallen as social security rates have been either frozen or increased by less than inflation.

Thus even with the £20 increase a typical Universal Credit claimant would be hundreds of pounds worse off in 2021 than in 2010.

Ethel MacDonald of Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty said: “The brutal cut in Universal Credit is yet another example of governments attacking the poor to benefit the rich.

“This is also an attack on wages and conditions, aiming to force people to accept insecure low paid jobs. Many on Universal Credit are of course already in such badly paid work, since 39% of Universal Credit claimants are in employment.”

The ECAP spokesperson urged people to organise: “ We need to organise at the grass-roots to resist the cut to Universal Credit, the entire austerity agenda, and the whole profit-based system.

“Claimants need to join together and support each other – for example by accompanying each other to appointments and assessments.”

ECAP stress: “After today’s protest, the struggle against the cut continues. What’s more, we are opposing the DWP’s reckless return to compulsory jobcentre appointments – this endangers both claimants and jobcentre workers, due to the continuing covid threat. We totally oppose all sanctions, and urge claimants to contact us for solidarity.”

While MSPs will debate the Universal Credit cut at Holyrood today, the decision lies with Westminister. The UK Government insists the UC uplift was always intended to be a temporary measure and that their focus is on getting people into work.

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty ecapmail@gmail.com

www.edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk 

Twitter @ecap_org 

https://www.facebook.com/edinburghagainstpoverty

Councils REDUCE Welfare Fund payments during pandemic, says ECAP

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty has denounced Scottish councils for not spending the money given to them by the Scottish Government to disburse to needy people via the Scottish Welfare Fund.

In response to the Covid-19 emergency the Scottish government added £45 million to the Scottish Welfare Fund, more than doubling its funding. But despite this, local councils – who administer the Fund – are actually paying out LESS in grants to needy applicants than they did during the same period last year!

The Scottish Welfare Fund (SWF) supports people in real need, and the government promised that by boosting the fund Councils would have greater flexibility in making SWF payments “ to ensure they can fully support people in financial crisis, including workers in the ‘gig economy’.

But Scottish Government figures reveal that while in April and May 2019 Councils disbursed a total of over £6.5 million in SWF grants, in April and May 2020 less than £6 million was paid out to needy people.

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP) say: “It’s a disgrace – despite having more than twice as much money to make grants, and despite soaring need, at the height of the pandemic Scottish local authorities have actually REDUCED the SWF grants.”

Shirley Anne-Somerville, Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People, stated in the Scottish Parliament on 27/3/20 that the guidelines normally limiting crisis grants to 3 per year were scrapped.

But an investigation by ECAP has revealed that virtually every Scottish local authority still declares on its website that Crisis Grants are normally restricted to three per year. The Highland Council website even declares : “You should not apply for a Crisis Grant if you have already had three crisis grants or awards made to you in the last 12 months”.

Wrongly Refused

One applicant in Edinburgh, applying for a Crisis Grant during the pandemic, was wrongly told that they could not be awarded a Grant because they had already had three grants in the last 12 months.

When ECAP challenged and denounced this as wrong, the City of Edinburgh Council then did pay the applicant a Crisis Grant.

ECAP say: “ How many applicants are being wrongly refused Grants? And how many people are being put off applying by Councils wrongly stating that the Crisis Grant limits still stand? This denial of support to people in need is unacceptable.”

In a statement, ECAP insist: “ The Councils in Scotland must pay out the extra cash they have been given as grants to people in need. Councils must make clear the 3 Crisis Grants per year limit is scrapped and make payments accordingly.

“And the Scottish Government should tell local authorities they must widely publicise the extra support available, massively increase payments, and implement the new rules ending the restriction on Crisis Grant payments.”

More detailed article at http://edinburghagainstpoverty.org.uk/?p=2783

Stop the Evictions, campaigners urge city council

edinburgh coalition against poverty
Single mothers hit by the Benefits Cap and their supporters descended on the City Chambers once again last week (writes Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty – ECAP). Demonstrators protested outside the City Chambers before supporting a deputation addressing Wednesday’s Policy & Strategy committee meeting.

Continue reading Stop the Evictions, campaigners urge city council

Demonstrators set to ‘besiege’ Edinburgh Jobcentre

‘We are fighting back’ – Ethel MacDonald, ECAP
jobcentre (3)
Demonstrators will descend on High Riggs Jobcentre today to declare their resistance to benefits sanctions and workfare.
The protest at the Jobcentre near Tollcross will continue over lunchtime and organisers Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty say: ‘We aim to send a strong message that cutting people’s benefits and forcing them to rely on foodbanks is not acceptable.  Sanctions and workfare not only attack the claimants directly affected, they undermine all workers’ wages and conditions.’
Ethel MacDonald of ECAP said:  “An increasing number of benefit claimants are being sanctioned under the DWP’s increasingly repressive measures and more than ever the Job Centre is aggressively pushing the Workfare programmes.
“Just consider the barbaric numbers: according to Corporate Watch, 139,000 sanctions were handed out to Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants in 2009 but this more than tripled to 508,000 in 2011, the coalition’s first full year in government. And the Child Poverty Action Group state that since 2010 sanctions have increased by 126%.”  
Sanctions can be from a period of four weeks to up to 3 years.
ECAP support claimants to contest sanctions and resist being sent on workfare.  Ethel MacDonald explained:  “Claimants are not prepared to remain passive victims – we are fighting back. With the support of ECAP, Edinburgh Jobseeker Jimmy recently overturned a four week sanction imposed after the Oxgangs Neighbourhood Centre refused to take him on a Community Work Programme workfare placement.  Workfare provider Learndirect falsely alleged to the DWP that Jimmy had been ‘very intimidating’ to the placement manager – in fact he had just politely informed him that it was disgraceful that a community resource was participating in such exploiting schemes.
“ECAP and Jimmy met the Scotland area manager of Learndirect, insisted that Learndirect withdraw the sanction referral, and also wrote to the DWP explaining that it was Jimmy’s democratic right to express his views on workfare to the placement boss.   The DWP have now overturned the sanction and are repaying Jimmy his benefits.”
542 voluntary organisations have declared they will not take part in workfare and signed the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement. 
The decreasing number of organisations still participating in the schemes are under pressure to pull out of programmes which lead to benefit cuts and sanctions.  ECAP regularly blockade and occupy workfare users such as the Salvation Army and DEBRA, and workfare providers like Learndirect.  And this week Brian Tannerhill denounced that the organisation he founded, McSence, were using workfare and called on the communities of Mayfield and Easthouses to tell the directors of the Midlothian social enterprise this was unacceptable.
The Edinburgh action is supported by Edinburgh Anti Cuts Alliance, Greater Leith Against the Cuts, Edinburgh Industrial Workers of the World and Edinburgh Anarchist Federation, and is part of a Britain-wide Week of Action in the run-up to the General Election.  Co-ordinated via Boycott Workfare, demonstrations are taking place Britain-wide.