Hate Crime Reporting - Surreal Follow Up

Shortly after posting my piece the other day about NCC's poor quality advice on how to report hate crime, I found myself in this slightly surreal Twitter convo -

In case you didn't know, Antcliff is NCC's Chief Anti-Social Behaviour Officer.

I was actually trying to report a Community Protection Officer for disability harassment against me. As you can see, I did try to tell him, just not sure that he took it in.

Anyway, thanks to Mr Antcliff I did manage to report one of his staff for a hate crime, got a hate crime number and everything.

Nottingham City Council's Shit Hate Crime Advice

An extract from the City Council's webpage on hate crime reporting (link to screenshot as I guess it may change soon) -

• Stop Hate UK has a 24 hour third party reporting line for witnesses and victims of hate crime. This reporting service is independent of the police and will not pass information to them, unless the caller wishes for this to be done on their behalf
• ...
• Email talk@stophateuk.org 

An extract from the email I received from Stop Hate UK today -

"Unfortunately this is not something we are able to look into as we are not commissioned to operate in Nottingham..."

Thanks a lot Nottingham City Council for your bullshit hate crime reporting advice.

Important note; Stop Hate Uk's website DOES say that they are available to assist with LGBT hate crime across England, Wales and Scotland. It's just that I was trying to report disability hate crime. Mind you I don't think that NCC recognises that such a thing exists.

No Jobseekers, No Sickies, No Dogs. Economic Cleansing at Stonebridge?

Today I found out about a potentially disturbing and possibly illegal decision made about new lettings at the Stonebridge Park development of so-called 'social housing'.

The last time we heard about this particular development was when the nearby City Farm was presented with an apparent fait accompli by NCC to have 10% of their land taken away for parking for residents of the new estate. A portent of the levels of user friendliness to come maybe?

Anyway, it seems that at least some of the new social housing is to be subject to a 'local lettings policy' to restrict the type of people eligible for a tenancy. The policy aims, in short to '...improve the social profile of the area' by introducing a lettings policy that '...tackles crime and antisocial behaviour and also takes a different approach to the letting of the properties by focusing particularly on potential residents who are in employment or training.'

Ok, that looks a lot to me like they consider people who aren't in employment or training as having a negative impact on the social profile of an area. No?

Further into the report the following condition is cited (among others) -

"You are in employment or on a training programme i.e. apprenticeship and you can demonstrate the ability to pay rent subject to income assessment. Applicants in receipt of Disability Living Allowance will not be subject to employment/income conditions and those of pensionable age will be considered."

Preumably, the concessions to those on DLA and pensioners are there in a ham-fisted attempt at avoiding legal action for disability discrimination or the political fall-out of having a 'no pensioners' rule. Indeed, the appended Equality Impact Assessment notes no problems caused to people with disabilities by the policy other than some tosh about problems caused by having to wait for adaptations.

The problem here is, yet again, NCC's utter inability to understand the meaning of 'disability', both in everyday life and as defined by the Equality Act. Not all disabled people get DLA by a long chalk and, contrary to the policy's apparent expectations, quite a lot of people getting DLA do in fact work.

On the other hand, all those on Incapacity Benefit or its replacement Employment Support Allowance are UNABLE to work, that is a key defining condition of the benefit and a great deal of them will be defined as disabled under the Equality Act. I think what I'm saying here is that NCC is about to face a number of disability discrimination claims if the policy  remains in this state.

That aside (and I haven't even mentioned that their crappy EIA accepts that the policy may well discriminate against women due to most lone parents, who are significantly less likely to be working, being women. The justification is basically that they can go somewhere else. I kid you not) we should have a look at the whole basis of this belief that out of work benefit claimants are undesirables. NCC's evidence for this is based entirely on the experiences of the Victoria Centre flats which has had a similar policy for 25 years, according to the report. This 'evidence' includes the 'positive opinion of the Housing Patch Manager' (srsly) and that a 3 year survey of the dreaded anti-social behaviour' fingered 66% (27 in all) of miscreants being out of work.

First of all, that figure is meaningless without knowing the overall work status rates of the whole population of the flats. If 66% of all tenants are out of work then it cannot be argued that those out of work are more likely to be involved with ASB. Furthermore, it turns out that 12 of the 27 were receiving DLA or Incapacity Benefit so this raises questions as to the effectiveness of the entire policy i.e. they want to stamp out ASB but they are planning to allow DLA claimants in, but not Incapacity Benefit claimants, even though past evidence has shown they may commit ASB. So, the policy is an irrational shambles as well as likely to be discriminatory, think we've seen this somewhere before.

The sheer crapness of the evidence combined with a determination to go ahead anyway is the kind of policy based evidence that keeps the Daily Mail warm at night and has no real basis in fact. Anti-social behaviour will NOT be reduced by not accepting benefit claimants as tenants but it WILL result in fewer housing choices for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

NCC Brings in ATOS Style 'Independent' Assessment for Disability Bus Passes (And Sneaks In Some Cuts to Eligibility)

People with certain disabilities are entitled to a Mobility Citycard which gives you free travel on buses and trams. This is part of the national scheme plus local discretion to include travel at peak times. If you get the higher rate of the Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance you can apply without getting your GP to sign a declaration, if not you have to bother your doctor.

NCC has decided to change this though and has now decided to commission 'independent' assessment of disability by a private company. This is expected to cost the Council £480k over three years.

Such a tactic has echoes of national policy in that examinations for Employment Support Allowance are carried out by ATOS, a private company who has come up against considerable criticism.

The rhetoric involved is not too dissimilar as well. The Portfolio Holder decision (in the name of Jon Collins so don't expect him to have had any input into it or to know anything about it) justifies the cost on the basis that the move is likely to result in drop in eligibility of 15%, meaning a saving of £710k over the time of the contract. In other words, disabled people are swinging the lead and only the free market can save us. Sound familiar?

Another similarity is that there is a reduction in the eligibility rules being snuck in as part of the new arrangements. Disabled users will no longer get free travel in peak times, i.e. before 9.30am or after 11pm so those who have a job and/or a social life can obviously go and whistle. In addition, some disabled people will lose their right to have a companion travel with them. This is justified on the basis that the Mobility Component for DLA includes a payment for this. Except of course it doesn't really.

It's quite likely that it is these reductions in eligibility that will result in the expected savings rather than the use of the 'independent' assessor so why not ditch that and keep some of the eligibility?

Oh and the final comedy moment - Cllr 'Calamity' Jane Urquhart has disclosed that her own GP works for the appointed company, called 'Fit4Work' (can't find any definite info on these, mainly because 'Fit4work' is such an unimaginative name for a company involved in medical assessments that there's loads with that name). As such, to avoid any possibility of a conflict of interest she avoided taking the decision herself and gave it to JoCo, a well known safe pair of hands. Apparently they already do the Blue Badge stuff.

Housing Benefit Cuts

Interesting article in the Guardian linking to a spreadsheet of estimated losses per tenant expected from the coalition's housing benefit cuts.

These are figures released by the DWP so make of that what you will but it's clearly not alarmist hyperbole drawn up by a bunch of anarchists or whoever governments like to blame these days.

I've taken an extract showing the effects on the three East Midlands cities. For a bit of a giggle I included leafy Rutland too. Guess which one is affected the least?

LA                       S/R     1br    2br    3br   4br      5br

Derby UA             -4      -12    -9      -13    -14      -26
Leicester UA        -3      -7      -7      -8      -15      -28
Nottingham UA              -15    -12    -13    -18      -30
Rutland UA           -2      -5      -7      -8      -15

So, unless you live in a shared house it's not looking too good for Nottingham tenants. The only mitigation is an increase in the budget for Discretionary Housing Payments. This doesn't bode well considering how well these have been administered before.

Ignorance About Mental Health Problems as Disability

The Daily Mail recently carried an article written by Janet Street-Porter which argued that depression was just the latest of a series of trendy diseases. I hesitate to link to it but I decided I would as it is important that you realise what determinedly ignorant, shit-for-brains, mind-bendingly fuck-witted verbal slurry that this massively overrated boat-faced honking old sow has managed to get published in that cretinous reactionary shitrag. Believe me, if I were to happen across this knowledge vacuum and she was merrily aflame not a drop of my precious urine would be used in preventing her painful fiery death.

Ok, maybe I would if I'd just been given three wishes and I'd cashed one of them in for an ability to piss petrol.

Obviously local councils have more awareness than someone like that no? Well, in NCC's case, not by much.

You may remember that NCC currently sees prosecuting me for having an overgrown garden as a viable use of public funds at present, even though it is less than interested in keeping its own house in order. The case was adjourned for them to investigate whether I am a disabled person or not, a fact of which they are more than aware.

If they genuinely didn't know the answer to this question (which they do because the employment tribunal told them) then you'd have thought that the best thing to do would be to contact me for information, maybe even seek permission to obtain further evidence. They didn't do this.

The date of the rehearing approached and I dutifully trotted down to the magistrates court to face my doom.

NCC's solicitor calmly explained to the magistrates that I wasn't a disabled person because she had contacted the council's adult care service (i.e. social workers) and they 'couldn't confirm' that I was. So, a legally qualified employee of Nottingham City Council was prepared to stand up in court and state that NCC's definition of disability was somebody who had a social worker.

Never mind the fact that data protection rules would have prevented the social workers from telling her anything about me without my authority, or that after their treatment of me there is no way I'm letting any of their employees near me, she actually thought that all disabled people would have a social worker and if you didn't have one then you cannot possibly be disabled.

To me this is a level of ignorance of at least the same level as Street-Porter's. I agree that JSP managed to find a wider variety of aspects in which to express her stupidity but then she does claim to be a journalist. But in terms of idiocy levels NCC are right up there.

Believe me, depression can be extremely debilitating but those that suffer from it often don't get taken seriously due to ignorance or because we don't 'look' disabled. And we most certainly don't ALL have social workers for a variety of reasons.

On that last point, I'm off to work on my inane dribbling in the mirror and to try a pair of pants on my head for size. Gotta look the part if that's what it takes...

Discretionary Housing Payments - Still Not Enough Answers

For those of you who haven't been paying attention *tsk* or are new, Discretionary Housing Payments are system by which Local Authority Housing Benefits offices can make extra top up payments to recipients of mainstream Housing and Council Tax Benefits if they accept that they are in need of extra help with their housing costs. The government sets an overall limit for how much can be spent on DHPs each year and provides a central grant towards the cost, normally providing 40% of the overall limit. Other than that councils are pretty much free to decide how they award these payments subject to the normal rules of rationality and not fettering discretion.

While councils are not obliged to spend up to the overall limit, there is clearly nothing for them to lose by spending at least the whole amount of the government grant although they are not obliged to do that either. Councils are expected to make their own decisions as to whether they wish to spend any higher than the central grant bearing in mind their stated priorities.

The catch - if you don't spend the whole of the grant next year's grant is reduced. So, not only is there nothing to lose, there is a clear incentive to manage decision making so that all of the central grant is spent, also meaning that there is more money coming into the local economy.

That's the background. Unfortunately I have found out via Freedom of Information Act requests that NCC has been consistently and significantly spending less that the central grant for each year the DHP scheme has been in operation and as a result, each year the central grant has been reduced. NCC gave me the numbers of successful applications to the scheme, the figures for grants and overall spending limits as well as the amounts awarded but claimed that they couldn't provide the total number of applications because doing so would cost too much. Strangely, they could provide the figures for 18 months or so when asked by a relatively minor councillors committee and these figures suggested that nearly 60% of applications were refused. Because of this refusal I couldn't calculate the refusal rates for all the other years. Funny that.

I've just had my appeal back over the refusal to provide the total numbers of applications to the scheme and its still a no-no. They say

"I have raised your concerns about the information you require seeming to be readily available in previous years as evidenced by the Debt Collection report and have had the following reply; “ The figures were generated in that particular year as part of a business need and a manual monitoring exercise had to be carried out”. Unfortunately this means we are in the same position as stated in this office’s previous reply in that figures can only be obtained by significant manual work being conducted."

So, if this is to be believed, having reported to a committee that there are concerns about high levels of refusals, NCC still has no mechanism for collecting routine information allowing it to monitor the refusal rate. And the extra information they would need would be fantastically easy to collect, you just count the number of applications that land on the doormat, divide the number of successful applications (which they do monitor) by this number and you have the success rate. That such a lack of simple performance management could be allowed to continue beggars belief.

The alternative of course is that they are lying through their teeth and are using the excuse of expense to get out of releasing embarrassing information, a common tactic in the public sector I'm led to believe by my reading of Private Eye. Its the Information Commissioner's Office for this one I'm afraid.

Oh and they were very pleased to make the following claim;

"I can also advise that the level of Discretionary Housing Payments made has steadily increased and current forecasting of awards through to the end of the financial year for 2008/09 shows that expenditure will closely match the DHP grant."

Ok, the first bit I like but they've left a vital factor out of the second bit. The reason why expenditure is now forecasted to closely match the central grant is not just because expenditure is increased, its also because the central grant has reduced year on year. Expenditure has only increased by £19.5k between 2002 ( the first full year of operation) and 2007 (the last year I've got figures for), whereas the central grant has dropped by £37.3k and has carried on dropping since. That's nothing to be proud of and I did make a snide remark in one of my previous posts that I hoped the proportion of grant spent wouldn't be taken as a performance indicator. Little did I know that they actually would see it as something to be proud of...

Other questions I asked them were whether they'd taken any initiatives to increase take up of DHPs and they told me they had done the following;

- awareness training for frontline staff so they could advise callers of potential entitlement. They sent me their training notes and presentation which, in all honesty looked fine and dandy for non specialist staff

- two leaflets, one aimed at claimants, the other at advisers. However, they just seemed to have packed a supply off to local advice agencies and housing offices rather than do anything active like targeting potential client groups*

- giving advice agencies "an input" into evidence requirements for claims. However, this seems to have been merely to use budgeting guidance from National Debtline. This is probably the best guidance there is I should say but kind of lacks a local element. I wonder if that was really all the advice agencies suggested?

- a dedicated team of staff to make decisions. This won't really increase take up per se but is good for consistency so we'll not knock it

The final question I asked was whether NCC had set up guidance for decision makers. The answer was that they use the Department for Work and Pensions best practise guidance and the above mentioned Debtline budgeting guidance. So the answer really then is 'no, they haven't' in terms of whether there is any local guidance on what factors inform decisions to award or refuse a payment, how the budget should be managed throughout the year etc. I'm sure the DWP guidance is very good but it is national and the whole point of asking councils to administer DHPs is that they can take local factors into account. What works in Bognor may not be appropriate for Bulwell is what I'm saying here.

They sent me copies of this national guidance (not a lot of work as its available on the DWP website) and of the Debtline info.

Call me impatient but there's not a lot there that would take much effort to get together to tell the truth. Its all stuff that, if they were actually using it as they claim, would be lying about the place on a shared network drive. So why did it take them 2 months to get it to me?

One last thing. A small part of me has been worrying that I'm the only person who seems bothered about this. Maybe its all a fuss about nothing? So I did a 'back of a fag packet' calculation to get some idea of how much Nottingham has missed out on in lost central grant due to failure to manage the scheme properly.

I decided to work out how much the central grant would have been each year if the budget had been managed so that the grant remained the same in real terms each year i.e. an inflationary increase. I used an average inflation figure of 3% to make it a bit easier cos its not far out and I'm just trying to find out what order of magnitude we're talking about here. I added all this up and compared it with actual expenditure.

You want to know the difference? Over half a million quid lost, or about 3 former Chief Executive's leaving presents worth if I'm being cheeky. That's money that, at no cost to the council itself, could have been brought into Nottingham's economy, helping to reduce poverty and homelessness.

And of course that's only the half of it. If NCC had decided that preventing poverty and homelessness was a priority they could have allocated some funding to enable a spending level over and above the level of government grant each year. This would in all probability have demonstrated a greater need and resulted in a higher level of central grant.

Like I said, the issue of not telling me the total number of applications is going to the Information Commissioner in due course and I'll write up what happens when they adjudicate. In the meantime we can say quite safely that NCC refuses nearly 60% of DHPs while money is going begging. NCC are of course free to rebut this claim with figures should they chose to do so.

My first post on DHPs

My second post on DHPs

My post on my adventures with the Freedom of Information Act

*see my first post linked to above and my experience suggesting a targeted distribution of leaflets