10.7% of Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) claimants in Salford received sanctions in the year to March 2014, according to a new report by Sheffield Hallam University's Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research and Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people. The national average for such sanctions is around 7%.
The statistic makes Salford the 11th worst area in the country for JSA sanctions, although its claimant rate of 3.7% of working age residents is the highest of all the areas named in the top ten, meaning that, numbers wise, the city would be much higher up the league.
"In 2010, the incoming Coalition Government pressed ahead with plans set in train by the previous administration for a programme of welfare reform that placed conditionality and responsibility at the heart of welfare policy" the report states "In March 2012, strengthened conditionality and a harsher sanctions regime were enshrined in law when the Welfare Reform Act 2012 received royal assent.
"A key change has been increased severity and length of sanctions: a claimant can have their benefit withheld for up to three years if they do not meet the stringent requirements now placed upon them" it adds "...Government rationale for the use of sanctions is that they are effective in changing behaviour that will, in turn, reduce unemployment. However, with no robust evidence to support this claim, the effectiveness and fairness of the sanctions regime has been questioned."
Sanctions are applied for all sorts of reasons failing to attend interviews, failure to actively seek work and failure to comply with all sorts of conditions. The report explains how the Department of Work and Pensions wording of sanctions policy is skewed against claimants... "If a sanction is imposed, then, it is because the claimant did not comply, rather than because they could not comply" the report states.
Graphs produced by the research team show both the number and proportion of JSA claimants sanctioned per month mushrooming since 2012. For those claiming Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), there's been a massive rise in sanctions since December 2012, when a `tougher regime' was introduced, with a three-fold increase between March 2013 and March 2014.
There have been lots of studies of the unfairness of sanctions...
"Our evidence suggests that many claimants have been referred for a sanction
inappropriately or in circumstances in which common sense would suggest that
discretion should have been applied by JCP staff" stated the Work and Pensions Select Committee, while the Scottish Parliament noted the "punitive and arbitrary nature of the new sanctions regime, which appears to be creating a climate of fear around job centres rather than encouraging claimants back to work."
To back this up, the report states that around half of all 'reconsidered' decisions
are overturned... "Evidence suggests that communication is often poor, letters are difficult to understand, claimants are not informed of their sanction" it adds "and the system is criticised for failing to take account of claimants limited access to the internet and IT skills."
The report also tried to examine the effect of sanctions on homeless people. Although there are no statistics for this, it suggests that "homeless people may be
disproportionately affected by sanctions" because they are more likely to face barriers like learning and literacy difficulties, no fixed address to receive letters and no internet access.
The results of sanctions are almost Dickensian in their effects. Food poverty has led to the phenomenal growth of food banks (the Trussell Trust reckons that up to half of the people who use its food banks do so because of benefit related problems). There's growing evidence of survival crime (shop lifting for food or essentials), fuel poverty, family tensions, anxiety and health issues stemming from debt and hardship, and what the study calls `disengagement with the system' - rather than `encouraging' people into work, sanctions have the opposite effect of de-motivating some people to look for work as they can't afford to travel to interviews.
Sanctions can also have knock-on effects on claimants' housing and increase the risk of homelessness, states the report. While sanctions do not lead to the loss of housing benefit (HB), once a sanction is in place payments are suspended because of `a change in circumstances'...
"Concerns have been voiced, and evidence presented that when claimants' JSA or ESA is withdrawn, they frequently lose their HB as well, having not been adequately informed of the procedure" the report states "Assuming that only their JSA/ESA is affected by the sanction, claimants can remain unaware that their HB has stopped
until they are already in rent arrears."
Add in payments towards Bedroom Tax, contributions to Council Tax and service charges that claimants are now expected to pay all lost with sanctions benefit withdrawal and the report concludes "it is easy see how benefit sanctions could, potentially, increase claimants' risk of homelessness, particularly as reduced income - and financial circumstances more broadly - has been found to be a key driver of rent arrears". The authors add that the introduction of Universal Credit may make the situation even worse...
"Tenants who receive their HB directly and who are sanctioned face a choice between paying their housing costs and paying for food, heating, travel costs and such like" they write "There is evidence that tenants in the social rented sector who receive their HB directly are already using their HB to cover essentials, without the added financial impact of being sanctioned."
In Salford, with one of the highest levels of sanctions in the country, all these harsh affects of the system are being faced by unemployed residents. It's becoming a scandal, faced not just by claimants but by the city as a whole...
Sheffield Hallam University Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research/Crisis: Benefit Sanctions and Homelessness: a scoping report.
See also previous Salford Star articles:
Salford Job Centre Benefits Sanctions Protest click here
Salford Job Centre Sanctions Shock click here
Photos by Steven Speed
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