We've shut your benefit claim with no warning at all: How the DWP really does disability

In this episode, Niki tells us how the DWP closed her universal credit claim without any warning at all. They just shut it and that was that. Niki has a 7 year old SEND son who also has autism.

Niki and I called the universal credit helpline to ask what was going on. I recorded that call. 

Universal credit kept saying that Niki would have to wait for the DWP to carry out a mandatory reconsideration to get her claim back. An MR, as you probably know too well, means the DWP looks again at a decision it has made, like closing a universal credit claim without warning. 

On the phone, universal credit kept telling Niki to keep checking her online universal credit journal to see how the MR was coming along. 

But Niki can't get into her journal, because her claim has been closed. Still, universal credit kept saying that Niki should check the progress of her mandatory reconsideration by looking at her journal. 

This went round and round and round until universal credit hung up on us. Great. 

You know how Liz Kendall, the now-ex secretary of the DWP, has spent most of this year saying that disabled people and their families would be fine and get specially tailored support even as she cut benefits?

This is how this so-called tailored support works. Brilliant, innit.

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All music on this podcast is by © Concrete Uncle

Episode artwork: by Niki's son

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