I had a pretty disastrous industrial accident that left me disabled in 2000. In 2004 I took myself off incapacity benefit and started my own business with the help of ‘Access To Work’ grants that were dependent on my getting mobility allowance. Initially the whole thing worked very well, the business grew very quickly and I had the assistance of an employee whose wages were paid in part by ‘Access To Work’, I expected that such input would have been no longer needed after a year’s trading.
Then the DWP withdrew my mobility allowance, because I was working, the other assistance stopped as a result and I had to dismiss my helper and tried to carry on alone. The strain of trying to cope with my disabilities caused me to further injure myself and I ended up in hospital, very seriously ill. The business collapsed as I could not carry on at all following that. My Bank had loaned me money based on the promises made by the DWP to help me and I’m now £14k in debt with very little chance of ever repaying it. The promises looked very good on paper but that was all they amounted to, paper promises that were withdrawn almost immediately.
If the government wants to ‘help people back into work’, they will have to put a very short leash on the animals in the DWP who have a very nasty habit of turning on those who trust them when asking for such help. In my experience, this is not a new initiative, it’s an old idea in a new box. The box looks like it might contain a good deal but it is in fact, pretty much empty.

Pete Braven-Giles apperars to be a genuine claimant, all genuine claimants are entitled to be assisted.Having said that, there are some hundreds of thousands of benifit fraudsters who are lying to gain benefit and because the rules of detection are not stringent enough, are getting away with it. These crooks are reducing the amount of money in the kitty that could be paid to genuine claimaints they are the worst type of criminals they are indolent con artists, and proper tests should be put in place to expose them even though these tests might upset genuine claimants. In the course of my travels I have encountered some of these fraudsters and they made me seethe with anger. The testing system is too lax, but if the Government tries to in itroduce meaningful tests there’s a hue and cry about protecting the vunerable and they are watered down.It’s not just about getting incapacity claimaints back to work,it’s about stopping workshy thieves from stealing from the national purse, in the end, however stringent the test,the genuine will always prevail.