Kicked off ESA

An urgent case came to our attention.  A man who, for half of his life had been a below the knee amputee, with heath complications connected to this.  Despite letting the DWP know he wouldn’t be able to attend a work capability assessment, they stopped his Employment Support Allowance claim, which left him with no money, and the knock on of this was his housing benefit and council tax relief claims also stopped.  

With two children under 10 to feed and no money, he was trying to see if he could return his motability vehicle so he could have at least the money that went to pay that, for food instead.  Doing this though would mean he couldn’t get around so well, and would struggle to get the children to school.

His gas and electric were on prepayment meters, so there were no debts associated with them, however there was nothing on the gas card, so they were without hot water.  As all this had happened with such short notice he was unable to prepare for it financially, so the bank were returning direct debit payments and debiting his account with bank charges instead.  Although as it is such a hand to mouth existance, it is almost impossible to have any sort of a financial buffer to deal with these kind of emergencies.  So we sent over £200 to buy food, put money on to the gas card and fuel in the car.  He was so grateful, and insisted that when he was able to, he hoped to pay the money back to the fund so that it can be used to help someone else.