Nearly everything we have come to enjoy and rely on in our everyday lives usually follows a familiar pattern: exclusively available to the aristocracy, then to the slightly better off, then, after a long uphill struggle, to the poor. This is true of tea, parks, chocolate, lawyers, central heating, medicine, mortgages, French bulldogs, access to the arts, and almost everything else you could think of, with one notable exception.  

Advice services, one of the few pillars of our battered welfare state to have survived both Thatcherism and austerity in remarkably rude health, were set up entirely with ordinary people in mind. From the very beginning, debt played a huge role in any advice service’s remit. Household incomes fell throughout the early 1940s, as men were called up to fight, or sent home in coffins, depriving many families of their main breadwinner. By 1942, there was a record 1,074 Citizens Advice Bureaux, from large, grand premises based directly in town halls, to a converted horsebox which toured the areas worst affected by bombing to offer support to the survivors. Most had at least one debt specialist, a practice that continues to this day. 

Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) sprang up from a single hostel on Islingword Road in 1968. It now offers expert housing advice to those facing homelessness across Sussex, including victims of the dreaded Section 21 no-fault eviction. 

The Federation of Independent Advice Centres (which would go on to form Advice UK) was formed in 1979 when 100 or so activists from several major cities met at a North Kensington primary school. Unlike the Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) model, where offices are reliant on well-established and standardised practices, any local charity could theoretically become a member. The original intention was primarily to pool resources where it made sense to do so. Following a spike in membership during the Miners’ Strike, the FIAC turned its attention to developing educational tools and, from 1989, offered some of the first nationally recognised advice courses.  

Hastings Advice and Representation Centre (HARC) was founded over 40 years ago to provide free and confidential benefits advice, to address inequality, relieve poverty and improve the quality of life for vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals and families. Today, they are staying true to these stated aims. 

While the advice sector across Hastings, St. Leonards, and the surrounding villages can feel like a crowded field, with HARC, Citizens Advice 1066, the Seaview Project, and BHT Floating Support among others all providing crossover services, there are plenty of people needing help. Advice services will regularly make referrals across different areas of expertise, or where appointment slots are fully booked months in the future. Around 19,000 client contacts were made in the year to March 2024 to HARC alone, representing a significant chunk of our town’s 92,000 population, and these numbers only look set to grow if next winter is as unforgiving as the last.

I spoke to Wendy Knowles, Development Manager at HARC, about the importance of advice provision generally, and the unique challenges facing our town. Though we work for different advice services, her verdict on the sector mirrored my own: 

“A recurring theme over the past 42 years that HARC has been around is that the poor are always the hardest hit when there is a period of financial instability. Whether or not you would agree with the old adage that the rich get richer, it is difficult to deny the poor are getting poorer. 

“Our clients tell us that the current welfare system is not accessible. Application processes and assessments are increasingly complex and restrictive, making the system incredibly difficult to navigate. In addition, parliamentary decisions and media communications have traditionally fuelled a narrative where benefit claimants are seen as ‘idle’ and fostered a culture of shame.” 

Wendy has no doubt seen, as I have, an increasing number of those who have never had to claim means-tested or disability benefits before, being completely overwhelmed by the bureaucracy involved, alongside a steady stream of returning clients with complex problems and chaotic lives who have been having to navigate the system for so long that they have given up hope things will ever get easier.  

A rash of punitive and reactionary immigration reforms introduced since Brexit have also meant advice services are dealing with more and more immigration-related issues, whether from those who have been here for decades, or from recent arrivals. So, what happens when the advisers themselves start to feel a bit overwhelmed? 

Luckily, the advice sector has the backing of a solid infrastructure of other charities and organisations that they can turn to when a particularly challenging case comes their way. The No Recourse to Public Funds Network (NRPF) advises organisations dealing with anyone from asylum seekers to spouses of British citizens who cannot claim benefits, on their rights in the UK.  

Shelter has a specialist team providing expert debt advice (including case law) to debt advisers who have exhausted every other avenue, and the Institute of Money Advisers give them excellent training and support throughout their careers.  

Mind Infoline and Rethink can pick up cases where a client may be struggling with their mental health, including through conference calls to introduce a distressed client to a dedicated mental health professional.

This is to say nothing of the degree to which we all pitch in to help each other. 

So, what can we all do to better support our local advice services? When you use them, treat their staff and volunteers well by keeping appointments or calling ahead to cancel. Don’t misdirect anger over systemic injustices, and bring along relevant paperwork. Raise awareness of the good they do. Citizens Advice have long maintained a policy of never publishing posters or literature asking for donations, so few are even aware of their charity status, but it’s important to remember that many of these services used to receive the bulk of their funding from local authorities and are now having to raise it elsewhere. To the majority of service users who have nothing to give, sometimes a kind word and a sense of a job well done is all it takes to lift an adviser’s spirits. We’re also partial to biscuits. 

INGRID ALLAN is a charity caseworker and local campaigner who moved to Hastings in 2023. She can often be found on West Hill with her dog Bentham. For Hastings Advice and Representation Centre visit harcuk.com

HARC, the Hastings Advice and Representation Centre, has published its 2023 Client Survey. In her forward to the findings, Chief Executive Jacky Everard said that, in the 38 years she has been involved with the charity, she had “never known its clients and staff to be under more pressure than they are right now.”

She reported that “more than half of people can no longer stretch their income across the month or afford to feed themselves and their families a balanced diet…Nearly two thirds of people were struggling to pay fuel bills”.

The charity CEO, whose team are trained to help people claim benefits, said that the safety net that the welfare system is supposed to offer “has huge holes in it and is in urgent need of repair.” The benefits system, originally designed to catch people when they most need it, “has become unbearable to navigate for people already in crisis”, and has resulted in the levels of mental stress being reported by clients being “higher today than they were during Covid”. The inability of very unwell people to make their finances stretch to even the basics was pushing many of them to “breaking point”. 

Ms Everard said she was “horrified” that one in ten of the people walking into the HARC service say they feel suicidal, with their distress made worse by a welfare system that “bullies and humiliates them and leaves them destitute”.

HARC EXPANSION

The demand for the service has increased massively in recent years. When the charity was set up in 1982 it gave advice and support to 1,500 people with a staff team of four. This compares with 18,700 people who contacted HARC’s 24-member staff team, including 14 advisors, over the last year. Some 1,405 of these enquiries were from those who are vulnerable, elderly, disabled or isolated.

The support team represented 618 clients at review and tribunal, and in total some 89% of clients who approached HARC received support. Those whom the organisation couldn’t support were referred to more appropriate agencies.

As a result of the help of the service, HARC secured £5,189,774 in previously unclaimed, enhanced or reinstated benefits, of which £4,463,206 was secured for clients with disabilities and long-term health issues. 

In comparison, it cost just £768,000 for HARC to provide its extensive range of advice and representation services comprising face-to-face exchanges, telephone and email advice, secondary advice to professional colleagues, outreach surgeries, home visits, complex caseloads, advocacy and tribunal work. HARC also runs two charity shops in London Road and Queens Road.

“REPEATED FAILINGS”

Ms Everard said this is the third survey that has shown consistent reporting of the “clear flaws in the current welfare system” and ongoing problems with the way health assessments are conducted. HARC has a 94.5% success rate at appeals, which shows “repeated failings in how the health assessments are conducted” and “is a clear indication that the system isn’t working.” 

She acknowledged that the government plans to remove the work capability assessment for Employment and Support Allowance and Universal Credit after the next election and, before that, to change some of the descriptors, but commented: “there is no guarantee the changes will improve the lives of our clients – for many, it will make things worse.”

As well as seeing the huge impact on clients, Ms Everard acknowledged that it was also very hard for staff to deal with such issues day in, day out. She said that staff welfare was a top priority, and that robust measures had been put in place to help the team to cope with stress levels. These include fully embracing hybrid working and reflective practices to create an environment of collaboration where staff members can team up, draw on expertise, and offer each other support.

Her conclusion seemed despairing. “I wish that I could stop saying the same things, survey after survey, that there were areas of improvement I could genuinely point to in terms of how things are changing. As I cannot, I will once again ask those who read our survey and who understand the issues we are raising, whether from the people they support, or through personal experience, to raise their voices and use their platforms to advocate for change.”

DEFIANT

However, she ended on a defiant note: “we need to not just read this report and sweep it under the carpet with the other bad news, we need to raise our voices again, at every opportunity presented, to say that enough is enough, this cannot go on.”

The 2023 Client Survey is, indeed, a very sobering report. The issues HARC deal with on a daily basis are long standing and apparently systemic. But some of the testimonies of the clients whom HARC advisors have helped are both revealing and inspiring. Jane, for example, said they “helped me with all my forms, they were there all the way and after. I just wanted people to listen to me for once. HARC were really effective in getting [DWP] to listen.” 

Another client, Mick, was equally positive. “I want to tell anyone out there who is struggling – don’t give up! Going to HARC is like taking your Ford car to a Ferrari garage.  You know you are in the safest hands and the service is going to be top notch.”

Could you be missing out on unclaimed benefits? Read about 3 Million Pounds of Unclaimed Benefit for Hastings Residents

Survey reveals evidence of ‘systemic dishonesty’ in Universal Credit benefits means testing by Emma Harwood

“Draconian” reforms to the welfare system introduced by the Conservative government are failing those who need it and driving some to the brink of suicide, a survey by a local benefits advice agency has revealed.

The survey – carried out on behalf of Hastings Advice and Representation Centre (HARC) by an independent consultancy – revealed ‘systemic dishonesty’ in health assessments carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions to determine eligibility for benefits.

Assessors working for the DWP were shown to have lied and purposely downplayed or omitted the health problems claimants described when making their final reports, often ignoring doctors’ and claimants’ evidence of ill health.

The survey also reveals that routinely, where this had been the case, claimants had challenged their decisions and subsequently won their appeals.

However, the appeals process – which typically takes up to a year – has meant that people who have received inaccurate assessments of their eligibility to work have been forced to live on drastically reduced incomes while their appeals progressed. One such claimant, whose inaccurate health report showed his assessor had lied nine times, won his appeal because he had taped his assessment interview.

More disturbingly, seven of the 100 people interviewed told the survey that without support from HARC they would have committed suicide, and a further nine said they believed they would have had a breakdown or ended up in hospital.

The survey was conducted by independent East Sussex consultant, Julie Eason, who interviewed HARC clients from across the county.

“I initially thought there were just one or two rogue advisers, but once we started asking clients about the assessments it became clear to me that there was systemic dishonesty in the assessment process”, she said.

“People who had been dropped outside the centres because of mobility issues were described in reports as having walked in from elsewhere.

“GP and clinical evidence was typically not making it into  reports and what clients told the assessors was often twisted and inaccurately described in order to show they had made miraculous recoveries.

“Clients typically had a number of serious and complex health issues which were trivialised and understated, and the evidence they provided was inaccurately reported.”

Hastings Advice and Representation Centre is now advising anyone who needs to undertake a health assessment to insist that the session is taped, so they can prove the inaccuracies should they need to appeal.

The Health and Welfare Reform Act came into effect in March 2016 and included the introduction of Universal Credit (UC), a new single system of means-tested support for people of working age who are either in or out of work. As it has been rolled out to gradually replace Employment and Support Allowance it has come under criticism for pushing the poorest and most vulnerable deeper into poverty.

Jackie Everard, Chief Executive Officer of HARC, which provides free confidential advice, support and representation to over 10,000 people, said: “We are not an emergency service, yet on best estimates, we believe we saved at least nine times as many lives as the local RNLI last year. Our welfare system is supposed to be a safety net for people in desperate times, yet instead it is pushing people to
the brink.

“This is not right and we call on all politicians locally to stand up for the people they represent and to take action on behalf of their poorest residents.

“We ask them to advocate for an end to these draconian welfare reforms and to challenge the DWP who have created what is clearly a failing system of health assessments.”

The survey also showed that 51 percent of people receiving benefits under the new Universal Credit system are unable to make their money last the month. 21 percent of people have been unable to turn on their gas and electricity due to financial hardship. 50 percent of  parents surveyed described sending their children to school in shoes that were too small or had holes in, while 44 percent of parents said they were unable to afford basic Christmas or birthday presents for their children.

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