Community Links

Come on Newsnight. You can do better than that!

I stayed up to watch the Newsnight special on ‘rethinking welfare’ (27th Feb 08, BBC2, 10.30pm), and was a little disappointed (and tired) that the vast and complex subject that is the benefit system was addressed in a rather disjoined and unfocused manner.

They could (easily) spend a week, devoting each night to examine a specific area or group affected by the benefit system. Last night they touched upon drugs, housing, worklessness, education, lone parents, employment / unemployment. It was too much, in too little time. At one point Jeremy Paxman asked “so what’s wrong with the benefit system?”

Here’s my answer. It’s: 

• Too complex – in Community Links 30 years experience of offering advice, we are increasingly finding that unless you have a professionally trained adviser to help you navigate and work the system, then it is unlikely you will get all you are legally entitled too, and there will be delays and complications, like under or over payments.

• Changed too often – constant tinkering to changing the benefit rules has lead to a very complex and contradictory system.  

• Outdated – it doesn’t respond to sessional, part time and temporary work, only a 35 hour week. So much work in deprived areas is part time and sessional. So the work is simple not being done in these communities, so they remain poor and dormant.

• Mean – why are so many benefits paid out below the poverty line?

• Administratively burdensome – for the individual and the staff. Application forms are unnecessarily long and complicated (JSA is 44 pages). And frontline staff have so little time to spend on individuals. They are on a ‘40 minute treadmill’ – a typical form can talk 1hr 30mins to fill in. What happens? You can figure that one out for yourself.  

• Filled with traps – the benefits trap is well documented with housing costs being one of the highest hurdles. In a recent project we found one person paying £15,000 a year in rent, though

One of our many creative ideas to improve the benefit system (and so help government reach its 80% employment target) is ‘CREATE: the Community Allowance’. This would allow people to be paid to do part time or sessional work that strengthens their local community on top of receiving their benefits, for a limited period of time.

We are in discussion with government about being able to pilot the Community Allowance later in the spring.