Insanity in Westminster Council:

The Murderous Social Workers & The Multi-Billion Pound Charity Scam.

As many of my friends already know, I've come close to death numerous times over the past three months. Not because I'm ill, even though I suffer with the disability ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), but because I'm under the so-called "care" of Westminster City Council (WCC) Adult Social Workers and they simply don’t.

Let me explain in detail, a few weeks ago a variety of charities (including Action For M.E.), the Metropolitan Police Service, friends and advocates all reached out to my WCC Adult Social Worker, Katie Taylor, to ask for her assistance. Because of a relapse of my ME/CFS disability symptoms known as a “crash” I’d been unable to move, write or talk for weeks. As I had no bottled water on my bedside table, I hadn’t drank any fluid in five days.

So following this group's requests, five days later, Katie’s colleague, Susan Scott, visited my room, but Instead of bringing water and food as you’d expect, she just dropped a letter on top of the duvet of my sick bed and left. I later discovered that this was an eviction notice saying I would need to be back on the streets on the 20th of November 2023.

One can only presume she concluded I’d be a corpse when she arrived, as I don’t think anyone could survive ten days without fluids.

It is literally with no sense of hyperbole, a death sentence in our society to rely on uncaring, ill educated, bureaucratic and money chasing individuals to look after us. What we need is people who demonstrate the best of humanity, not the worst. 

If you are disabled in Britain, an adult Social Worker by law has a duty of care to look after you. To ensure that your human rights of access to money, housing, welfare & health are all met, though sadly nobody in Britain is enforcing this; so they don’t.

I’m currently housed in a Premier Inn Hotel, but I’ve been in various temporary homeless accommodations since being taken in under the “Everyone In” scheme in April 2020. Before that I was rough sleeping at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. I’d slept there nearly every night, for the two years prior to lockdown and In total, I’ve been homeless for 14 years now. It all started in 2009 when a simple credit file error prevented me from renewing my tenancy on an apartment in The White House building, just behind the Royal Festival Hall, on the Southbank here in London.

I’ve been under the care of Westminster City Council (WCC) since 2020, but even so I’ve been left to go without food & water for up to five days at a time on more than five separate occasions. After just three days of dehydrating a human being has a good chance of dying. As mentioned, my ME/CFS at its worst, has me bedridden, unable to speak, move or write for months at a time, so I become completely reliant on other people to survive, as I have these past eight weeks.

To live in a time in Britain where the state can literally kill you without consequence, is just inconceivable to me; but here we are!

Even though the Social Services have a duty of care to protect my property my possession were lost in part by staff at Premier Inn Hotel in Paddington and in enitrety on a second occassion at the Kings Cross Hub by Premier Inn, a total cost to me of near a £1,000, the stress of which resulted in me being taken to A&E.

And It is not like these barbaric practices aren’t well known to all of us is it? There have been report after report on DWP failings, Social Care failings and Housing failings. So what confuses me is why there is no public outrage, I mean where is the anger, the lawsuits, the front page news, the city wide demonstrations with the streets full of a disgruntled public - as we witnessed with the recent support for Palestine - to end all this?

My beloved RSA (Royal Society of Arts), where I've been a Fellow for the past seven years, should of course be leading this charge for basic human decency in Britain. We are after all a global Fellowship of over 30,000 thought leaders, broadcasters, journalists, MPs, CEOs and visionaries all focused on Social Change and 9,000 of us are based here in London. Therefore, we, more than anyone else in the UK, are in a position to eliminate, in an instant, any social ills that are identified in this country. Especially homelessness, because as you’ll see, I’ve even provided them a plan on how to do so on their website.

Sadly though, I've discovered that many of the long term committed staff I’ve known for years have left the organisation. The Fellows who had been there for decades and would have normally rallied to my cause, have rescinded their memberships in disgust at the changes of late, and the new staff are all currently on strike for fair pay and working conditions.

This seems to be a story that is reflected across the board of every charitable institution in Britain presently i.e. where the social hearts of our charities have all been replaced with Third Sector CEOs beating their drums for cash. One could argue this change in our culture is the major reason that the British public seem so complicit in wishing for their own societal destruction.

So, as ever, it is left to the creatives, the poor and the downtrodden to fill in the gaps of these failings in the Third and Public sectors. For example, journalist and sole founder of the Disability News Service, John Pring in association with the National Theatre, BFI (British Film Institute) & ETT (English Touring Theatre), created the amazing VR Experience, the Museum of Austerity, which premiered at the London Film Festival in 2020, where I saw it, and is being revived in Manchester for just four days this week - 8th - 11th November 2023.

It is infuriating, not only because it should be more widely available and on for way longer, but far more importantly, because it should be a compulsory experience for every DWP worker, Social worker, Council worker and MP in the land, and it isn’t. The piece is so impactful that most people can't handle more than two or three of the factual stories being told before becoming emotionally broken.

It tells the stories of the deaths of nine people, directly caused by these awful state practices and the public sector staff's disregard for humanity, through the eyes of someone close to them. The experience for the audience is witnessed through the lens of a holographic projection that captures the enormity of the moment their lives end.

However, anyone who has seen the abhorrent behaviour of council staff dealing with people experiencing homelessness in the videos posted on housing campaigner Kwajo Tenebao’s Twitter feed in recent weeks, will know all too well that these individuals will probably take great pleasure in hearing about people’s suffering. Some starved to death in their flats, some froze to death on the streets and others committed suicide when they’d been bullied by the very organisations like Social Services, the DWP and the Local Authortities that were set up and paid to assist them. I’ve been close to everyone of those experiences, firsthand in the past year.

And never forget the worst people for benefit fraud are the staff who actually work in these Public services. Take the Lambeth Council team who stole a £1 Million pound of Housing Benefits meant to assist those needing housing in 2016. Or the astonishing £1/2 Billion alleged fraud undertaken by Thurrock Council using other council’s money to fund the lavish lifestyle of just one single individual, a news story which was shown on BBC’s Panorama programme in 2023.

As today’s papers are all filled with the news of the impending homelessness crisis, the insane cost of temporary accommodation and Suella Braverman’s comments about making it illegal for Homeless Charities to provide tents to those sleeping rough on the streets, I’ve been thinking, shouldn’t we just shut the whole sector down and simply get on with solving the problem now? 

Over 1.1 Million people "work" in the Third (Charity) Sector at a cost to the Taxpayer of approximately £15.4Bn in direct taxes and another £30Bn in charitable giving. with the remainder of their £58Bn total income, coming in from other Taxpayer sources.

Add to that, that nearly every major charity only exists to do the jobs that the state is already funded to undertake, and the only logical conclusion is to just shut them all down isn’t it? At least then you’d be able to give the money raised for them, directly to the people that it was destined for. That works out at roughly £78,000 per person, per year, when it comes to the homeless organisations that support me. 

A matchbook calculation admittedly, but as the sector claims they help approximately 3,069 rough sleepers annually and there are four major homeless charities, Shelter (£37m), Crisis (£64m), St. Mungo’s (£118m) & Thames Reach (£22m), who have a combined annual income of £241 Million, we just divide the two figures to get a total of £78.527.21 per head.

I realise that this isn’t precisely accurate but you get the pont - even if it was half that money - I’m sorted.

Their respective CEO Salaries would also go to those who actually need it too, so Shelter’s £135,000, St.Mungo’s £189,000, Crisis’s £120,000 & Thames Reach’s £95,000 would all be paid to those on the street.

I’m always surprised when people ask those experiencing homelessness why they call these major institutions “the Homelessness Industry” because It seems pretty obvious to me.

I couldn’t help noticing on Social Media yesterday, that comedian Joe Lycett managed to raise £50,000 from the public to support the homeless Charity Crisis following Braverman’s remarks, I’d bet you big money that those who donated would presume that their cash would go to the people struggling with their lives in tents, but it doesn’t cover half of the charity’s CEO Matt Downie’s Salary, so who knows? Maybe they’ve just raised enough money for his next holiday.

Shame it didn’t go to the likes of Museum Of Homelessness who have a complete flat pay structure in their organisation and only do things that directly assist people who are struggling with the experience of homelessness rather than spending their money on fundraising to pay high HQ rents and corporate salaries.

If you want to see how insanely wasteful the whole Public and Third sector system truly is though, just journey with me on my experience over the past 4 weeks:

Westminster City Council Homeless department, Housing Needs, offered me some accommodation. Great you’d think, but they’ve barely told me anything about it, where it is precisely located, or provided me photographs in order to view it, in order that I can ensure it meets all my needs. They obviously know I  couldn’t visit it in person because I’ve been trapped ill in bed with my ME/CFS with no support.

They are also aware I couldn’t manage my life in this new address as things stand, because they’ve provided me with no carers to ensure I’m able to eat, drink and look after my health when I “crash”. The hotel has literally been life saving in that regard, as when I’m able to move,  I can get food from the Breakfast buffet that’s included with the room (and I then hoard that food for other meals later too), without any money coming in, it is the only guaranteed food I get daily. 

There’s also staff here 24 hours a day that assist with my care, as I have none. But that has its own issues with no way to contact them when I’m crashed, and therefore isn’t the panacea people think it is.

WCC also knows that I wouldn’t be able to fund this new accommodation, as all of my DWP Disability benefits have all been incorrectly stopped again, for the 13th time, which has left me with not a penny coming in at all now. So I would therefore have no way to pay bills or buy groceries. The council were warned about this 3 years ago, and at the time they said they’d assist to resolve the issue, but then didn’t.

Yet they are claiming that I’m not engaging with their offer of accommodation,… “Right?” Where’s Samuel L Jackcson when you need him?

Now, if you do the logic thing, you'd think that my Social Worker, who as mentioned before, has overall control of my Health, Welfare and Housing, would be able to do something to force other departments to put things right wouldn’t you?. But… No! She's done nothing whatsoever to support me since having been appointed to address my needs back in 2020:

In respect to health she tries to pass me back to my GP. As I have an incurable chronic lifelong disability in ME/CFS, which has no drug or treatment regime, this is of course utterly pointless and in no way helpful.

I explain I need ad-hoc carers to assist with my day to day health needs, when I'm unable to tend to them myself due to a “crash” of my condition’s symptoms. Her retort is that the council can't supply them when I need them, only when they are available at the council’s convenience. However she goes on to say I can set up a company to run my own carers if I wish, under a scheme called Direct Payments, which the council will fund. But I obviously need a Carer to manage all that additional time,  paperwork and bureaucracy just to set it up in the first place, and thus I find myself as Yosarian in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

When it comes to her and the DWP, things get truly insane and we go into what I would call “Beyond Kafka” territory. Rather than using her influence to get the Department of Work and Pensions to comply with the law and reinstate my disability benefit payments, Katie advises me to get in touch with the charities to deal with it instead. They won’t help of course, but will provide lists of other organisations who might help, who in turn will provide yet more lists of other organisations who might help - but none of them will actually, you know… Help!

I’d been through this all before so I know, but you have to play the game otherwise WCC staff will claim you are “not engaging with their services” and abandon you. And the really annoying thing is, if I can’t chase these organisations as I’m too ill to write and I have no administrative Carer provided to pick those things up on my behalf - nothing ever gets done and I find myself back in that wonderful Catch-22 again.

Think that’s mad, then you won’t comprehend at all what happens next, because this is genuinely what’s currently going on with the insanity of the Third Sector Magic Roundabout:

A representative of Crisis, who couldn’t help with the DWP issue was kind enough to get in touch with Shelter on my behalf a few weeks ago, and was told by them that they couldn’t help with it either. However, Shelter advised her to get in touch with an advocacy service called Pohwer for assistance, Pohwer said that as WCC has placed me in temporary accommodation in Camden and they only cover Westminster, they can’t help. So they put her in touch with Rethink who do cover Camden, but they wouldn’t assist as I’m under the auspices of Westminster Council and they don’t cover Westminster.

The charity Z2K is still deciding whether they can provide help, two weeks after they were contacted by me for urgent assistance. The state commissioned Advocacy Service can only offer help or support with challenging care needs and not actually advocate for anything at all. They advised me to get in touch with the local Westminster advocacy service Pohwer who referred me to Rethink, exactly as had happened with my colleague at  Crisis. It’s Groundhog Day!

Disability Rights UK and Scope don’t offer any kind of advocacy support for those with disabilities. The Civil Legal Advice Line could give no legal advice on Welfare issues. CAB just doesn't pick up their phones at all - my Crisis colleague was on hold for 45 minutes before being forced to hang up to attend a meeting. Disability Haven’t responded to emails even after being chased numerous times and the Council have been granted all my permissions to contact whoever they need to, to sort all this out, but simply won’t.

That’s been days of work for numerous people, contacting over a dozen institutions, who have thousands of employees between them, which are being funded with tens of millions of pounds of public money, all of them achieving precisely nothing.

So what’s the point of them? I could fix my problems in a day. if I just had the money.

Shouldn’t we all now be solutions focussed and not process driven? Otherwise a lot more people are going to find themselves unnecessarily dead and added to the Museum of Homelessness Dying Homeless Project memorial.

I myself would have died had I not had the good fortune of having some amazing friends who rally to my aid. But even then, if I can’t write, I can’t ask for their assistance, and because I’m in a Hotel with no phone in my room and I don’t use a mobile phone because of my condition, and Social Services haven’t set it up so staff can let them enter my room, they can’t just drop in and check on me. In fact the only people who can actually get past the security at reception to ensure my well being are... yes, you’ve guessed it... my social workers… who as we all know, don’t.

To top all this off, Councils are crying out for more money from the Government, even though they’ve demonstrated time and time again that they don’t know how to manage it. Just look at the situation when it comes to temporary accommodation in hotels like Tavelodge and Premier Inn, where councils are just throwing money at them.

Seriously… they are paying the daily rates! They didn’t negotiate a flat fee of say £30-£50 a night with breakfast indefinitely, that would simply cover the costs incurred by the hotel, as anybody with a modicum of common sense would have done. No, they are filing hotels with families experiencing homelessness all over the country, purely for the profit of the Hotel companies and their shareholders. WCC are paying in the region of £80,000 per year to Whitbread (owners of Premier Inn) just to house me. Over three years that’s £1/4 Million pounds! Just buy me a flat.

When I put the question to Westminster Council’s first ever public consultation why they don’t just give me the money to sort out my own problems, this was their response

“

If the Local Authorities gave everyone currently housed in hotels, half of what they are paying for their accommodation, everyone would be able to sort their problems overnight. It would also halve the housing costs of every Council in Britain in an instant and all but end homelessness in the UK.

That of course is a sensible, cost efficient and simple solution to solve the problem, so clearly that will never happen. The system is designed to be complicated, soul destroying, judgemental, intransigent and unnecessary and everyone who works in it, prefers it that way.

Which means instead of writing my Memoir, Fighting The Dreamkillers, and working with Hannah Knowles at Faber to secure an agent, as I should be. Or developing my rather aptly titled book, “Why Don’t People Help? The Decline of Civil Society In Britain and How We Can Reverse It”, with Emily  over at Bristol University Press. I’m being stopped from being societally productive by insane bureaucracies and useless bureaucrats.

I should also be engaging with Preserivica & The London Metropolitan Archive to upload my personal diaries and emails to their records, so that they can tell the stories of all this insanity for future generations in the hope we never repeat these mistakes again.

And I should also be working with the Museum of The Home to host my homelessness exhibition idea, Living In A Car. Reengaging with Tate Gallery to finally stage Paul Atherton’s Greatest Londoners: Black Female Talent and kick starting with the charity Crisis & Lloyds Bank, Paul Atherton’s Displaced:Dispelling The Myths of Homelessness, my on street, Citywide exhibition here in London that the Arts Council England (ACE) scuppered by being as similarly incompetent as the local authorities are, back in 2021.

The WCC by their inaction, obfuscation and lack of support are preventing me from doing all the above and are even trying to eliminate my hope of a remittance from my ME/CFS symptoms too. 

I’m a member of the Serpentine Swimming Club and three times a week swim in the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park. It is one of the few things that I can do for free to ensure I get regular exercise. I’ve been doing it since May 2023 up until my most recent “Crash”. I hope to compete in the Peter Pan Cup swimming race on Christmas morning this year. It is a lifetime ambition, as watching it has been part of my Christmas traditions since arriving in London in 1997. I only have to swim one more race next Saturday to achieve the requirements to compete. But being threatened with being returned to the streets in a few weeks will scupper that too.

That takes away any likelihood of accomplishing something worthwhile this year, depletes my ability to persevere and removes any point in wishing to continue to exist on this planet - which of course is WCC’s whole plan.

The Local Authority is keen to keep me in a cycle of repeatedly telling them the same things over and over again, things they’ve already ignored a thousand times before, all to ensure they can get another bite at the cherry of trying to kill me, as my ME/CFS symptoms will invariably relapse again, just as they turf me back to the streets.

The big question this time though will be, will anybody care enough to force them to change? Will you? Will all this current public outrage over banning tents and the current homeless charity Christmas campaigns finally tip public opinion to  say, enough this time, that’s it, we’ve got to fix this problem once and for all and for good?

It is very unlikely, but as everyone who knows me knows, I live in hope!