An Open Letter

  The UK has descended into chaos since my last update. With the Conservative Leadership Race set against the backdrop of droughts, strikes and a cost-of-living crisis that has us nose diving towards another recession. But what is one person’s decade long quest for justice worth compared to the socio-economic upheaval we’re all currently facing? Last month I lost 11% of my pay to the DWP because of this ongoing Carers Allowance issue. Loosing such a significant portion of my pay prompted me to investigate ways of increasing my income. That’s when I fell victim to a Facebook phishing scam. A company set up only four months ago and registered in Ireland uses HMRC fonts and colour schemes to purposefully misrepresent themselves. They trick desperate and vulnerable people like me into providing personal information which they then pass on to a third party company which was set up during Covid.   This third-party company defines themselves as a tax consultancy but seem to be ...

Today, DWP have taken 11% of my pay without consultation or means testing. If I include my other deductions, Tax, National Insurance, Pension and Student Loan I’ve just lost 31% of my pay, 38.84% if including Council Tax. Then pretty much 20% on all purchases in the form of VAT, meanwhile the cost-of-living crisis continues to spiral out of control. To recap, DWP are taking £6,376 from me for an alleged overpayment of Carers Allowance between 2009-2014 despite there being a regulation known as offsetting which allows a deduction from any recoverable overpayment calculated equal to any amount of additional income related benefit, which would have been paid had the correct facts been known. An extremely complicated case with lots of mitigating circumstances boils down to a very simple point. My grandmother and I should have claimed Attendants Allowance (Severe Disability Premium) instead of Carers Allowance. At the time the difference between these two benefits was less than £0....

In 2004 I had my first encounter with DWP. I was a vulnerable 16-year-old with undiagnosed autism who had just been placed in temporary accommodation. I literally survived off nothing more than packets of jam and sugar whilst waiting for my benefit claim to be processed. When my first payment, a back dated cheque for £226.03  never arrived I quired it only to be told it had apparently been cashed. Bearing in mind that it was a policy that any payment over £50 required ID to cash and could only be cashed at a nominated post office. Absolutely dismayed, I went the police station and to the post office demanding to see the CCTV footage, but they wouldn’t show me. I found out sometime later that it was in-fact the manager of my temporary accommodation that was stealing people’s money, but I was never reimbursed; I was just left to suffer. In 2009 my grandmother broke her hip, so instead of progressing from college to university along with my peers I became her full-time carer....