Accused of fraud while saving for the HOLD scheme

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DocG

I have a story that you may be interested in. I will keep this first contact short as the story itself is quite complex and is now spread over many years. It concerns the constant breaches of the disability act and harassment by the Department for work and pensions. Ive been unable to work for quite some time. In that same time ive tried many times to get a suitable property to my needs. Again i can go into all that if you decide to hear more. In the end i gave up on the council lists as they always wanted to put me in hi rise flats. I first turned to local housing associations for help. But this lead nowhere either. By this point its already been around 5 years or so of searching. While both my physical and mental health a declining fast. In the end i ended up on a friends setee then into a hostel for the homeless (after i attempted to take my own life due to the stress from the DWP. Its constant no matter what they claim.). This was a further 3 years. Over this entire time the DWP constantly took away my entitlements as they had done every time they were up for renewal For both my ESA and PIP. Again this is part of the much longer story. The stress of this was unbareable. After some time in the hostel which i needed just to become well enough to even speak to people. I started too look into the Help to buy scheme for people on long term benefits (HOLD). Again over the next 3 years i had my benefits removed even though i was in the hostel. I then found out i should of had other benefits and id been lied to about being in the NON support group for ESA. They told me themselves it made no difference and financially i wouldn’t gain from it either. More lies on the behalf. I still need to try and fight to get this back dated from the moment they moved me from the support group. To correct all the errors and get my benefits back to how they were before the assessments. I found that i had been missing out on a lot of money i was entitled too. During this same period i found only one housing association who helped people using the HOLD Scheme. Only 2 at the time had even heard of the HOLD scheme on the entire list supplied. I believe i had called 30 or more to ask this question. The fact their wasn’t even a house in a 35 mile range of where i have grown up that was even on the normal shared ownership scheme that fit my requirements. The government claims you can get these properties from 10% share. Its a total fallacy. The majority of the ones i found where 40% plus. You may find some at 25% My last option was the HOLD scheme. After speaking to Advance housing and Mysafehome I was in for a massive shock. They could only offer me £80,000 pounds a much lower figure then anticipated. Due to them being one of only 2 charaties that did the scheme they now had limited funds. Meaning the rest would have to come from a mortgage. Again at this point id like to say that this is a government approved scheme for the disabled. Plus all my benefit issues were still going on. I had several different meetings with both mysafehome and advance. They told me what i would need to do and all the financial targets. I had to prove i could manage a mortage and save the required amount. This figure amounted to over £16,000 as i had little in the way of overheads at the hostel. I saved every penny i had from my benefits and had a sum from the DWP for money that they owed from failing to automatically give me Severe disability payment. Again this was all very complicated and i had help from Advance and mysafehome sorting all these things out. However i still had to do a large amount of this myself. Considering my mental health and physical issues. Being in that hostel was horendoes. The noise and the lowest of the low scum in their. All i wanted was to be out of their as soon as possible. But all these things made it drag on for 3 years. No one should have to deal with things like this from the DWP. At this point i had informed ESA and PIP on the situation. I had to do this to get things all in place. The council were then informed and requested to agree the rent on the property. As per the HOLD scheme. They were a total nightmare. This dragged on for months and months. They tried to force me to universal credit before they would agree to paying the rent. Which would then disallow me from using the HOLD scheme as severe disability payment was part of the requisits. This doesn’t exsist on universal credit. This has been in the news a lot over the past few years. In the end and again with help from mysafehome and advance. The agreed to pay the rent. The should of been no reason for this to even of been a problem. They obviously knew nothing about the HOLD scheme. Like everyone else i spoke to at the DWP. These aren’t all the problems i faced but it took over 2 years to get in place. Butting my head against the wall over and over again. By this point COVID was also upon us. It affected everything i was trying to do. Mortgage options vanished even though their weren’t many for people like me anyway. Only one bank in the entire UK would supply one and this was KINGDOM bank. Rates were changing the housing market was in disarray. Everything was taking forever to get done. By the time all the paperwork was sorted and all the issues from the DWP and council were resolved it was now 2021. I still looked online to see if any shared ownership properties were on the market suitable but their wasn’t. I had to make many sacrafices to then afford a property. Including changing from a detached bungalow to a detached house. The detached option was one of the most important factors in a property to me. I suffer with several serious sleep conditions. I need to sleep when i need to sleep. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. Unfortunately people don’t care about people sleeping in the day and make as much noise as they want. Waking me back up and unlikely to sleep again. Due to the massive drop in the amount i could borrow i was now looking at properties no more then £200,000 and not a new build. Initially i had been looking at new build shared ownership properties between 10-25% share around the £300-400,000 range. Much larger properties, more suited, nicer areas, guarantee on the properties etc. As ive already stated the government claimed you could get these properties for people on the lower income range etc. I finally found a small detached property that fitted my now changed requirements. I would have to cope with stairs on a daily basis. But i felt that this was the best option the others i had viewed were smaller and this property had just been refurbished inside. So i wouldn’t need to spend lots to get it in decent shape. Also this was a requirement from Advance. I had buyers remorse the day i had to put down the deposit. But i do suffer with mental health issues anxiety being one of them. I just kept thinking have i brought the correct house etc. It took a week of my friend calming me down to get through that. At this point id already spent over £14,000 which included the deposit and the costs of setting up the mortage and support packages for me through mysafehome. This was all saved during my time at the hostel. As i was in a serious bracket for covid i only saw one person in my bubble over that previous year. I hadn’t gone out or spent anything that i didn’t need to just survive on. I did everything to prove i would cope in my own property. At the point of moving in i had all the usual stresses that people face during this period. Apart from having to live on a blow up mattress and have no other furniture or even curtains. The rest of the money i had saved was then used up to buy a quality bed and mattress due to my disabilities. Plus a riser recliner and sofa. Then some automated blindes. All of which were to make things easier for me due to my health conditions. Then it all starts again with the DWP. Even though they knew everything about what i was doing i had a letter from the fraud office. But they call it something much nicer. But basically thats what it is. Accusing me of claiming ESA fraudulantely. Their claim relates to a maximum amount your allowed to have for savings before your ESA is removed. This turns out to be a very small £6000. Something that no one mentioned would be an issue when using the scheme. As you can imagine there is no way you can save for a property based on this. I wouldn’t even of been able to save for a deposit. Never mind all the fees involved or any furniture. I would of been stuck in the hostel or an inappropriate council property for the rest of my life. I spoke to them both on the phone and in a letter. This was to explain what i had done and how everyone had been informed of this. They said each case is looked at individually and i shouldn’t be concerned. I took everything they said with a pinch of salt considering the hell they have put me through, every since i became ill. At this point i got straight onto Advance and Mysafehome to update them on this. I also stated at this point that i guarantee they are trying to take back my benefits that i was entitled too. I was told to wait and see what the outcome was. Many long stressful weeks went buy. After which i received another letter. They weren’t happy with everything i had told them. Plus they made no effort to get in touch with Mysafehome or Advance housing. Instead they now wanted a copy of every single statement from every account i had for 12 years. The fact my bank records don’t go back that far. I also at this point contacted my MP Mike Wood to fully explain what was going on and could he help. So i spent many hours downloading each of my monthly statements from 4 accounts 2 of which were ISA’s and one was a saving account. The one ISA was the government helptobuy ISA. Which turned into a joke. As i couldn’t deposit what i had already saved when i tried. With just £200 a month allowed in. You can imagine how long it would take to get a deposit based on that. I put all the standard PDF’s onto a CD and sent it recorded delivery. Against my best judgement as an IT expert i didn’t encrypt the disk or documents. As i knew they would try and complain about this. I awaited their response. At the same time i had complained to Mysafehome, Advance and my local MP Mike Wood. Letting them know how i was continuing to be harassed. At this point id like to point out that i was aggressively harassed to get all these things done within just 14 days each time i received a document. Something that was incredibly difficult for me due to my health issues. After many more weeks i was sent another aggressive letter. Stating i hadn’t sent in the required documents. At this point my anger took over as you can imagine. On top of my already frayed nerves. At this junction i took a photo of my delivery receipt and complained again to everyone. My MP was again on the case and after some time another twist occurred. The DWP now stated they can’t read the disk. Somehow the disk wasn’t lost. At this point i was already starting to think that they had definitely lost my extremely personal information. A violation of the data protection act for sure. Plus the fact they are now lying about this. A few months later i presumed everything had be sorted as i hadn’t heard anything from them. Boy was i totally wrong about that. 9 months later i get a voice message. I couldn’t really understand who they were. I then had a letter stating it was that same issue. However by the time i had woken up and read the letter. It was already after 5Pm and the appointment was the very next day. The anger and stress/anxiety that followed were horrendous. How could they still be doing this too me. What more could they possibly want. The rest of that night was unbearable. Due to my sleep disorders i then had to get a friend of mine to help me. She had to come down to my house that day. To make sure i would be up for this appointment. To say i didn’t sleep is an understatement. When my appointment was due my friend who had paid to get to mine. Then woke me up to make sure i was at least semi competent to anser any questions. However I had received a call to say the appointment was now cancelled and re-made for the following week. We were both furious at this. Not only for the wasted time and money, but the stress that this puts on me. I had barely had 4hrs sleep. My friend would have to spend more money and waste more time for the following week. The lady who came that day was very apologetic but i did state that people with disabilities shouldn’t be treated this way. Life is hard enough without being messed around. I never now if ill wake up or not. One of my illness’s is sever sleep apnoea. I have to use a machine otherwise i stop breathing over 36 times an hour and my oxygen levels drop over 50% This puts me at high risk for many issue including strokes. The NHS doesn’t provide battery backup system for the device. Which means if theirs a powercut, (which has happened several times in the past year) the machine cuts out and i choke awake over and over. During my conversation she showed me details of what the department had said to her. This included the following: 1) Its taken this long to get an appointment due to COVID. A total lie as the lady herself stated that they had been doing appointment over that same period. 2) They could not read the data on the disk and it had been to 2 different departments. (As mentioned they first claimed it was lost) 3) Still claiming i had comited fraud (But not saying it directly) The Lady who visited me had also been asked by the DWP for me to then give them permission to go to my back and get this information themselves. As you can imagine i had no intention of doing this. Considering they had firstly had the data and secondly i still wasn’t sure if they hadn’t actually lost it. I informed her i would not do this and i requested that my personal data (disk) was sent back to me. I did this for multiple reasons. Firstly to see if they had actually lost my disk and were trying to cover their own back. Or in fact their had been a problem with that disk. Even though it was checked before being sent out in a protective disk holder and a bubble wrapped envelope. I will also know if that disk is the one i sent out or a fake. At this point in time im keeping that private. The person who visited was also told in great detail about myself and situation. What i did and the scheme i used. I also stated i would now be happy to go to court to show how the DWP are discriminating against disabled people. Not allowing them to use a government scheme specifically set up for long term disabled. How they are accusing me of fraud and all the lies they have told. Once this meeting was over i then got round to writing the emails to Advance housing, mysafehome and Mike wood MP. I told them everything that had been said by the DWP. Its now been around a month and im yet to here anything back from the DWP. The DWP were also told that they could speak to mysafehome, advance and Mike Wood MP. As of 10/10/22 ive had no responses from any department. Having this hanging over the top of me is unbearable. On top of the usual harassment and lies spouted by the DWP and the companies they use to “Evaluate” people. Its a simple question “How can the HOLD scheme exist to help disabled people, if your not allowed to save money for it?” Does the government presume that all disabled people on long term benefit have wealthy family and friends? Or more amusingly, you can purchase a house and furnish it for less then £6000? Non of the money i had in the bank was from anything other than saving hard myself while in the hostel. Being a good saver and someone who wants a better life for himself should not be punished in this manner. The DWP forced me bankrupt (2002) by removing my benefits. This has made me paranoid about spending money on myself. As mentioned they have removed my benefits and moved me on to other benefits many times. Each time massively reducing my income. Thus i try and keep enough money to pay my bills. Therefore, preventing any chance of a further bankruptcy. It can take years to resolve issues. In total from when i first started looking at my own property to moving in was 8 years aprox. Regards, Glenn

Tori_Scope

Hi @DocG  

Thank you for posting about your experience. It sounds like you've been through a lot over the years! 

It seems as though you're getting some support to help you with your benefits issue- is that right? If you feel you could benefit from some additional advice or support, you can search for help in your area on advicelocal.uk

after i attempted to take my own life due to the stress from the DWP

You've mentioned in your post that you've been experiencing mental and physical health problems. Are you receiving any support to help you manage your health at the moment? 

Are you currently having suicidal thoughts or feelings?