Written evidence from Name Withheld (UCU0068)
Reference this joke of a system universal credit it has made my wife and I deeper in debt with eviction from landlord looming, I served my country in the army and was a frontline ambulance paramedic for 10 years until I was finished on ill health in may 2015, I currently receive pip £220 a month and ill health pension £240 a month, we have struggled immensely since I finished work and my wife has been in and out of work also so not a stable financial situation at all, before we finally got the UC in October 2016 which took 9 weeks? we were both out of work with not a penny to our name, I applied for housing benefit way back in july 2015 and this finally came thru in October but clashed with this crap universal credit hence we have been shafted with housing benefit as I have to find £525 for my landlord every month??? IMPOSSIBLE? to pay rent and live normally at the same time/ so unfortunately one had to be sacrificed and that’s the rent at the moment, my wife has just started employment and is getting £600 a month but as you can imagine we are just playing catch up from last years debt? We waited 9 weeks for universal credit and lived off foodbanks for all that time with the odd handout from the great citizens advice bureau for petrol to get us there, may I say that I have worked all my life from the age of 16 years old up to 2015 and had to finish the job I love due to ill health, I have been treated by the local council like something you stand in and this system is a total disgrace to my life and other peoples lifes, we are all human beings not numbers, is anyone going to realize this?