Did you get your payment?

Nope. A claimant can spend their benefit money pretty much any way that they see fit, and rightly so - I think it would be a grave infringement on their basic rights to dictate how they spent it. Even if it were illegal the type of outfit that would charge a welfare dependent person for such a 'service' would argue that they were acting with the authority of the claimant in a representative capacity and providing a service in the interests of the claimant. In reality the type of company who would charge a high sum to a welfare dependent person not in proportion to the service received only has one interest, and I had better shut up now before I get myself banned. Can you tell that I strongly object to the practice of people dependant on welfare being charged for service that is freely available from other organisations?! It's something I really do despise.

Very useful - thank you for posting this.

Sorry I'm confused. I thought you said you'd told them about starting the work but hadn't updated them on your income from that work. You are saying you don't know whether you did but think that you did. If you aren't sure, submit a Subject Access Request to the council, telling them that you would like all information held from computiersed records, clerical records and any audio recordings of telephone conversations (for the period in question). Tell them you would also like copies of written correspondance exchanged between you and them. When you get the documents in look through them for anything that would suggest you told them of your income. A change of circumstances form, a letter sent from you to them, anything in the computer prints of your claim. If you phoned your changes through, obtain all telephone bills for the period. Once you get the bills in, look for any calls you made to the council and see if you can find a match to the dates in the bundle of SAR papers from the council. If there is no corresponding date, (there is a phone call made on a certain date but nothing in your record to indicate why) pass this information on to your solicitor. The bank statements you mention - did fraud obtain them or are these ones that you handed in during your claim - if you handed them in, do they have details of income from Avon on them? Yes they will give you your award letters - this is covered by the SAR. I would not recommend telling the court that you 'forgot' if this is not what happened. Courts will not accept that as a defence on its own. If you told them, then you need to defend yourself (or preferably have a solicitor defend you) and avoid the possibility of getting a criminal record.

You will need to find a solicitor to represent you in relation to the criminal charges. Did the council not review your benefit in those two years? Unless you are claiming an income based benefit from DWP they normally do reviews - six monthly off the top of my head. Though you did declare that you were self employed, there still remains the issue of you not declaring the income made despite being advised that you had to do so and despite the yearly uprating letters which would have reminded you of changes that needed to be declared - I think this is the part that you will struggle with.

Just select the tick boxes on the form that are relevant to what you are applying for. There is a part of the form that asks about any debts you have - it's very important to complete this because it is used to calculate the repayment rate. Someone with no debt with make higher repayments over a shorter period of time than someone with lots of debt who would make lower repayments over a longer period of time. It's interest free.

Got an ad on freecycle now, thanks. I was in the charity shop earlier today - well the only charity shop that sells electrical goods. Their prices were ridiculous for second hand monitors!

It died on me! Couldn't get it going again and didn't get the loan monitor until today. Plugged it in, and voila, am here! Must be the monitor. This one seems to be working fine. Only got a shot of it though until next wednesday, in meantime am watching classifieds like a hawk for a cheap replacement monitor.

Yes, I have done. I've copied all my docs to it and am now backing up to a pen. I've managed to find someone who is willing to lend me a monitor tomorrow so that I can see if it is an issue with the monitor or the PC.

It's a flatscreen monitor, just the tele that is CRT. I do have a DVD in the drive, I put it in a few days ago to grab a document off it. It was put in after the flashing started but come to think of it the flashing and time taken to get to the login screen has gotten worse since so maybe it is to blame for it taking longer to get to the login screen. I'll take it out and try shutting down and restarting later on tonight. Am keeping it on for now whilst it's still working! I'm having a look at online classified's to see if I can get a cheap second hand monitor to check it, or a cheap second hand PC if it is completely busted. I don't have a laptop, no. I do have a broken netbook! Do you mean the standby switch on the monitor, Andy? Sorry am completely dense when it comes to tech stuff.

I'm not sure if it is taking longer to boot. Is there a way of telling that when the monitor doesn't show anything until the log in screen? I have an older TV - the CRT type. The PC doesn't plug into it.

About 4 or 5 days ago, my monitor started blinking like mad at startup and taking its time to get to the login screen. Since then, it's gone from taking 2 mins to get to the login screen to 30 minutes. Today I didn't think it was going to get there at all. Once it's on, it stays on fine but it looks like it's going to die on me pretty soon! I don't know if it is the monitor that is the problem or the PC itself - vista 32 bit. Can anyone help?

It's a bit late for this thread perhaps but for anyone else in a similar situation, we have a benefit A-Z in the CAG library. This includes the suspension and termination guide for DWP staff which can be viewed here and here

For a new application it should be backdated to the date that the claim was made. It's only renewals that should be backdated to the decision date.

In order to answer your question, can you tell us what the grant is called? Is it the Warm Front Grant, or is it a grant provided by your parent's utility suppliers? There are many loft insulation offers of money off and grants on the go at the moment so without knowing which one this is, it's not possible to answer.

Discussion thread - moved to bear garden.

Thread closed

As per honeybee's post above, the thread was closed and termporarily removed. This was done because what had begun as a healthy debate degenerated into arguing, which was of a rather personal nature in some instances. I haven't posted in this thread therefore I, as an impartial person, I volunteered to take a look at the issues which caused the thread to close. Firstly I will say that there is no one person at fault here, there has been arguing from both Site Team and non Site Team members. Both have fueled each other and it is not acceptable from any party. The debates will remain, but the arguments have been removed - both that of site team and non site team. Posts which do not discuss the issue in itself which was raised in the original post have also been removed. Secondly, I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that discussion threads such as this are not supposed to be in the benefit forum, which is outlined in the 'this forum' stickie in the benefit subforum. The benefit forum is here primarily to provide assistance to those who require help with their benefit entitlement and to bring forward information to benefit claimants about changes which may affect them, such as benefit uprating or a change in the ESA descriptors. Discussion threads belong in the Bear Garden. There have been occasions where we have allowed discussions to take place on the benefit forum however they are becoming so frequent of late that they are detracting from the main purposes of the benefit forum. For that reason, any discussion threads which began before today's date will be allowed to remain. Any new discussion threads must be started in the bear garden. If they are not they will either be moved there, or removed entirely. Lastly, because of the degeneration of this thread, it is being opened for 30 minutes only, to allow for final contributions about the issue raised in the original post. Please keep a civil discussion. Any posts which are not civil or are not in relation to the original post will be removed. This thread will close permanently in 30 minutes but will not be removed - it will remain viewable.

That would not stop the forum creator or authors of libelleous posts being litigated against. It would just stop the hosting site from being sued.

No, it is not where it should be at all. The benefit subforum is there to assist people with benefit entitlement, it's not a discussion board for matters like this, as is outlined in the 'this forum' stickie present in the benefit subforum. If we wanted to 'lose' the thread, it would have been removed in its entirity so that it would no longer be present anywhere on CAG, not simply moved to the correct area of the forum.

Great news. Thank you for updating, and all the best with the new job.

Definately a potential conflict of interest there - do not give in to this. Keep going, we are all behind you with this.

The reason that many sites buckle under the pressure of others is, as someone else stated, usually down to libel. A Site can be held liable for the words of its members, which is why on CAG we do not allow potentially libelleous postings. When bringing an action, the claimant (or pursuer in Scotland) can list the website/website owner(s), the hosting company and/or the member as the defendents to the claim. All three can be sued. The ICO made this clear last year. There is a defamation bill underway which hopefully might change that but it's a long way off yet. It costs time and money to defend a defamation action even where there is absolute defence, but where there is no legitimate defence the cost involved can escalate into unimaginable figures, far beyond the resources available to the person/company being litigated against. A lot of these websites although run indepedently are held on servers and it is often the serving company that is litigated against, so it isn't always the website owner pulling the site, but the company who host the site on their server. When they receive the threat of litigation, that is usually enough to stop hosting the site because there is no way for them to verify whether what is being said is true/can be proven or not and frankly why would they (the hosting company) look into it where there is no benefit for them to do so? Additionally, a lot of the more recent sites are run by individual people who mean very well indeed - they just want to help. But unfortunately, some of them do not consider the possibility of litigation or the very real prospect of what it could mean for them financially, so in turn they do not all consider the validity of claims made or what problems that they could cause. Often, they are 'in deep' themselves in that they or someone that they are close to has had Welfare issues, which gives rise to high emotions - this can affect what is posted. They become so angry (often justifiably so) that they do not consider that things posted have been posted out of context or there is no substantive proof that what is posted is true. When they are finally faced with such a litigation 'threat-o-gram', or court documents, it is only then that they realise what it could cause for them and it becomes a case of having to make a choice about whether to give in to the threat or take a risk which could run them into thousands of pounds of debt that they have no way of paying. I don't blame them for bailing in instances like that, particularly where that individual themselves are reliant on benefit as their sole source of income. Here on CAG, we take a 'prevention rather than cure' approach, in that we will not host any information which has the potential to be libellious to begin with. Although that won't stop threats of action, it does greatly reduce them which enables us to continue with the website, giving real help where it is needed. I agree with the Site Admin in this approach because I would rather we continue to assist hundreds of thousands of people get what they are lawfully entitled to - and I don't just mean benefit, I mean right across the whole of CAG - than lose the site because one individual wanted to say his or her piece on something which has the potential to end the site and all the help that it can give. People often get upset when they find that a posting of theirs has been removed because we consider it to be potentially libelleous. However, it is clearly set out in the forum rules that such postings will be removed, it's not a secret and we do this for the benefit of the hundreds of thousands of members (and potential members yet to join) in order to continue providing help to them.

In addition to Rebel's advice, ask to be put in touch with a domestic liaison officer. This is an officer specifically trained in domestic abuse cases who may be able to intervene. It would also be extremely helpful if you could get letters of support from the refuge you are staying at saying how this is affecting you to put in with your complaint. Little help, I know but I can relate having been through this myself - just want to let you know that you are not alone.

No, I'm afraid not. IB is being disbanded entirely. All people currently in receipt of Incapacity Benefit are being migrated over to ESA. ESA is a replacement for incapacity benefit with different qualifying conditions. The same is true for DLA which is being converted to PIP. ESA was introduced on 27th October 2008. At its introduction, it was only new claims on the grounds of incapacity that were put straight onto ESA, with people who were already in receipt of IB being able to stay on IB until they started moving them later on. It is only as recently as 2011 that they began the process of moving people from IB to ESA. Once PIP is up and running (it hasn't started yet) it will be the same as ESA was, in that new claims will go straight to PIP but people already receiving DLA will be moved at a later date. Once the migrations take place, he will need to meet the conditions of ESA and PIP to continue receiving benefit and they are not the same as for IB and DLA.