Following last week’s food banks report, which found delays in processing benefits are one of the key reasons for growing hunger in the UK, Iain Duncan Smith said to Parliament:
“Today I have announced that we shall be doing much more to raise awareness of interim payments for people who need them, particularly those who are in difficulty.”
These payments are called Short Term Benefit Advances (STBAs). These are repayable loans that can be accessed whilst waiting fot the Jobcentre to get round to processing a benefit claim. And the shameful truth is, that whilst the number of people using foodbanks has soared, the DWP have done everything they possibly can to hide their existence.
There is no mention of these payments on the section of the gov.uk website which provides information on “Jobseeker’s Allowance and low income benefits” or the section on “Benefits for families”. In fact there is no mention of these loans on any government website at all except buried in policy documents.
This is not surprising. When Short Term Benefit Payments were introduced, the jobcentre worker’s PCS Union warned that the DWP did “not intend to advertise the availability of STBAs to the public.” When guidance on the Social Fund was later published, detailing the kind of help available from the government in an emergency, there was still no mention of these loans.
Short Term Benefit Payments were brought in to replace Crisis Loans which Iain Duncan Smith scrapped in April 2013...
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