When mother of two Lisa Banks moved to the Coffee Hall estate in Milton Keynes she was shocked to discover that average life expectancy was 58 and antisocial behaviour was rife. Determined to see change, Banks started volunteering at the barely-used community centre on top of her part-time job and was soon asked to become a parish councillor, getting paid just over £300 per year. To her amazement, when she declared this income to the benefits office, her housing and council tax benefits were suspended.
She fell into rent arrears and was threatened with eviction. Desperate to make up the shortfall, she borrowed from a loan shark, and is now paying back twice the amount.
Banks's situation is not unusual. If benefit claimants declare part-time, irregular or sessional work that is under 16 hours a week, their benefits claim is thrown into chaos for months. Not much of an incentive to take a step towards the world of work. See a short film about Banks.
The problem is most evident in neighbourhoods where large numbers of people live on benefit. There, community activities, youth work, play work, lunch clubs, school crossing patrol or care taking offer entry-level jobs. But the jobs are likely to be under 16 hours a week and irregular - not enough to survive on, and those who take such work find themselves caught in the benefits trap. The result: community jobs are not filled, people stay on benefits, and the neighbourhood deteriorates.
A campaign, launched by the Create Consortium, is aiming to establish a community allowance as part of the UK benefits system. This would enable community organisations to pay people to do part-time, irregular, and sessional work that strengthens their neighbourhood without it affecting any of their benefits. The Create Consortium has estimated that at least 80 part-time jobs could be created in every neighbourhood through a community allowance - providing stepping stones on the pathway to work for thousands of benefits claimants across the country.
Banks says:
There are so many people who so want do to do some work here, but won't, in case it rocks their benefits. Going straight to working 16 hours a week is a really big leap for someone that's not done anything for years, or for someone on Incapacity Benefit. But if they could be trained to do four or eight hours each week, say, working with the kids on the estate, imagine the kind of impact that could have on antisocial behaviour and how much closer they'd be to getting a job.
Critics ask why some people should be allowed to keep their benefits while earning money from work. Jess Steele, chair of the Create Consortium, who has worked on the Community Allowance for almost a decade, says:
It's time to see benefits as an investment in the people who receive them to tackle social problems in their community. If they're doing work that has social benefit, why shouldn't they keep that little extra money to begin to lift their own family out of the benefits trap? We're proposing that people could earn up to a maximum of £4,305 a year or the equivalent of up to 15 hours a week on the minimum wage.
Banks's commitment to her community has kept her going despite the difficulties caused by the benefits system, but to many it's too great a deterrent. As Steele says, "How much longer are we going to waste the skills and talents of the very people in our most deprived communities who could do the most to turn them around?"
Read more about the community allowance proposals.
· Naomi Alexander is project coordinator with Create Consortium
