WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
Letter
Benefits injustice
Your excellent article Huge Holes in Benefits Safety Net in HIP 238 described the terrible state we are in in this country, with people falling through the safety net all the time.
I admire the work that Jacky Everard and her team do for people in need and on benefits at HARC. What she does not say is how compassionate staff are, and how deeply upsetting and stressful it is for them to see so many people struggling. It is indicative of what the country has come to in 2023. Over 40 years, need has increased by a factor of 12 – 18,700 people seen each year now as compared to 1,500 four decades ago.
When a wealthy Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, says living in tents on Britain’s streets is a ‘life choice’,she reinforces hateful attitudes in the wider populace, and stigma spreads. This applies to all people in need.
In 2021, when I could not walk and needed a wheelchair, I was shocked to find the unhelpful East Sussex Disability Service was outsourced and run by a profit-making private company who take public money. Our taxes! When I sought help for
the first time ever in retirement, and after 42 years of work and paying NI and tax, this outsourced company made a wrong assessment on a form. I sought advice from HARC who pointed me in the right direction to complain. I got an apology and an immediate offer of a wheelchair, but not before much stress. Luckily for me, a Hastings friend, Felicity Laurence had meantime surprised me with the gift of a wheelchair.
In September, award-winning Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone wrote an article about a disabled single mother of two in the south east trying to manage on Earning and Support Allowance (ESA), whose benefit and housing support was stopped all together. She had filled in a new form to let the DWP know she worked “16 hours a week”.
I was horrified at her predicament. I wrote a Freedom of Information request to the DWP. I asked them three things. Had they changed the wording on the part-time work threshold rule, to ‘less than 16 hours” and, if yes, when had they done this and had they informed people? Eventually I got an answer: yes, it had changed in February 2023, and no, they had not informed individuals. CAB and other agencies websites were automatically updated, but the DWP refused to say what it had changed from, “as this was not recorded”. It was an easy trap. People who had been used to writing ‘16 hours work’ and not 15 hours 59 minutes or less, fell into it. Luckily I found a clue in a Northern Ireland Gov website, which in 2022 had said that ESA claimants “are permitted to work for up to 16 hours”. That is different from “less than 16 hours”. I reported this to Simon Hattenstone and the Guardian.
Sleights of hand like this work towards meeting Chancellor Hunt’s goal of saving £1.3 billion on DWP budgets. Yet, at the same time, the government talks of reducing the top tax threshold for higher earners. Cruelty and injustice reign supreme.
Rosie Brocklehurst
Letter
Floods – the Lib Dem view
Dear HIP
For the second time recently Hastings shopping centre has been flooded, causing great distress and economic damage.
The latest incident was at a time of heavy but not wholly exceptional rainfall. I understand that some years ago an underground retention tank was constructed to prevent flooding, but it is clear that either the design or the operation of the system has failed again. All those affected are entitled to know why.
Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrats call for a public inquiry into the flooding to find and rectify its causes and hold to account those responsible. Nothing less will satisfy a public which is entitled to know the truth.
Martin Griffiths
Chairman, Hastings & Rye Liberal Democrats
Letter
Radical Solutions
Dear HIP
Demolish Priory Meadow and convert the site into a new home for Hastings United Football Club. The pitch will help absorb excess water. Move the retail businesses into the Debenhams/Owens building to create a multi-story shopping centre. Three problems solved.
Fiona MacGregor
Letter
A Donkey Ride
Dear HIP
I was a passenger on the 100 bus to Hastings yesterday. I was sitting at the end of the back row. A male passenger was sitting at the opposite end. Suddenly two women got on the bus with a donkey.
There are five seats in the back row with four seats facing us, and very little space between all nine seats. The two women and the donkey sat next to me. It was young and excited and difficult to manage. Its behind was pressed up against me, and I was straining against its weight and size as it kept pressing. I am barely five foot tall, slim and 82 years old.
The journey felt endless, very uncomfortable and SMELLY. At last, as I was getting off at Harold Place, I spotted lying in the passageway a piece of poo. It could only have come from that excitable animal as it came in
I had overheard the mother saying earlier to her daughter that they were “entitled” to use the bus with that animal.
And that is the crux of this story. ENTITLEMENT! That is the prevailing attitude nowadays. Not RESPONSIBILITY to consider others but ENTITLED to act in whatever way suits you.
Of course I understand the animal was actually a HUGE dog. But it was the same size as a donkey.
These women took up the space of five people and the rest of the space could not be used. I expect the donkey travelled FREE.
Is this at all fair?
Joyce McLeman
Letter
Paying all over again
Dear HIP
Well done for holding various organisations to account for the state of the water supply and waste water treatment industries in HIP 238.
Congratulations especially to Ben Bruges for Water Woes – the detailed analysis of the shortcomings of the water supply industry and Southern Water’s part in particular. It should never have been allowed to get like that.
And now, as customers, we are going to be asked to pay all over again for the debacle, and wait years for things to improve.
Keep up the pressure.
Haydon Luke
from our website
Forced Entry
I’ve had occasion to email Sally-Ann Hart several times over the past two years. She never, ever replies. I get a stock reply from some clerk. Even when I specifically requested a response from the MP, who is accepting a huge salary paid for out of our taxes, this was ignored.
Helena Wojtczak
from our website
So many of the holes in society’s safety net are only drawn together by the work of organisations and individuals like Ms Everard and her team. There’s a fabulous team in Rye too. Thank God for their work, that’s all I can say… I don’t know where our community would be without them. But I do know we need things to change…
Guy Harris
Letter
Taking a bus in the rain
Dear HIP
Standing under the bus shelter at Bexhill’s Ravenside Retail & Leisure Park, along with 20 or more people, some with prams and pushchairs laden with shopping and children. The bus shelter is totally inadequate. It offers a canopy possibly 4 by 1.25 metres that is open on 3 sides. It is situated between open fields and countryside and the nearby sea. The bus shelter at the back is open to all weathers. The rain came lashing in from the fields, those that could get under the canopy were drenched from the waist down. Others stood in the rain (umbrellas are totally useless in in this situation).
The 98 bus came after 20 minutes. Everyone was drenched, bags of shopping sodden too.
Here is a very busy retail park with M&S and other major outlets. The bus stop is always full with mainly elderly people and families with young children. We deserve better. The bus should actually pull into the retail park where a proper shelter could be built serving hot tea, coffee and buns, free if the bus is cancelled, or more than 10 minutes late!
I have written to Stagecoach accordingly.
David Quay
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