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East Herts Citizens Advice Service
Food bank support (April to December 2013)
1. Introduction
Food banks opened in the towns of Bishop’s Stortford and Hertford during the months of March and April 2013. These complement the service offered by the Salvation Army in Ware and Bishop’s Stortford, providing help for the purchase of essential items for clients in need.
As part of this service East Herts Citizen Advice Service provides vouchers to those seeking food parcels. Each applicant is assessed to ensure that they are eligible for a food parcel. Also an assessment is carried out to see if they can be helped in any other way, for example they are receiving all the benefits that they are entitled to.
A maximum of three vouchers can be given to any person. Also EHCAS has a few emergency food parcels which can be given to applicants if the food banks are shut when they come to see us. In total 181 food vouchers and food parcels were given to applicants during the nine months covering April to December 2013.
2. Reasons for wanting food parcels
The reason for clients wanting food parcels was also noted and categorised into eleven groups. These were: Delay in receiving benefits; Benefits sanction, where the clients were refused the benefit or it had been stopped if they had been receiving it; Benefit shortfall, where the clients received benefits but they were insufficient to meet all their expenses; Debt recovery from benefits, where the clients were getting benefits but had large debts which used up these benefits; Payday loans, where the clients had taken out a payday loan and were having problems repaying them; Bailiffs, where the clients were having problems with bailiffs; Other debt recovery, apart from those from benefits;
Problems being homeless; Problems due to family breakdown; Other problems, not mentioned earlier. The top five problems that those needing food parcels had are shown below.
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East Herts Citizens Advice Service
The biggest problem is the delay in receiving benefits. This was due to several reasons.
For example: Delay caused by forms not being filled in correctly or the wrong form being filled in on line; Delay receiving compensation for downsizing to comply with the new bedroom tax; Delay in getting JSA due to delay in getting work focused interview;
Delay getting results following medical assessment for ESA.
The next biggest problem was due to benefits being sanctioned. The most common reason for this was due to the benefit application form not being filled in. For example a client did not fill in a CTC form as she had been in hospital for the past four months.
Another client had his ESA stopped as he did not return the questionnaire, which he claims he did not receive. A client also had her ESA stopped as she did not attend a meeting due to problems with her support worker, and another had her benefit stopped as she was not well enough to travel to Luton for medical assessment.
In many cases the benefits received was insufficient to meet the costs of daily living, such as utility bills, etc. This also applied to single mothers with children who were in school and had school costs such as uniforms, trips, etc.
3. Problems with type of benefit
The top three benefits that clients had problems with are shown below.
By far the biggest problem clients had was with benefits such as JSA, ESA, etc. This was primarily because the receipt of these benefits was either delayed or sanctioned due to various reasons, as mentioned above. Also in many cases the amount received was insufficient to meet expenses such as bills, interest on loans, etc.
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East Herts Citizens Advice Service
The next benefit with the highest problem was Housing Tax and Council Tax and the reason for this were similar to those for JSA, etc.
5. Conclusions
The number of people requiring food parcels is surprisingly high, especially as the residents of Bishop’s Stortford and Hertford are considered to be relatively well off.
More could also be done to reduce the time delay in receiving benefits and the number of benefits that are sanctioned. For example one could make sure that people are aware of the procedure to be followed to apply for benefits and to continue to receive benefits. Also help needs to be provided to those who apply for benefits, especially if this is done on line. If benefits applications become “digital by default” it could
considerably increase this problem.
