Wales: Single man living literally on toxic air - Drakeford adding to the misery

pea60s52w

Hi

Asking on behalf of another person who is literally in crisis. Living in rural Wales, a single man with no family to depend on is down to 29p to cover all his bills for the next 2 months, stuck in a house that pre-COVID would've been condemned as unfit for habitation.

He was doing zero hours before COVID but that work has been nonexistent for a year. He's retrained for a career that would allow him to work under current rules, but needs to pay money to do a one week course to complete the certifications. Money he doesn't have.

Because he can't apply for jobs that require a qualification that he doesn't hold yet, he isn't able to get the work.

Because he's in the back end of nowhere, you can count the jobs he can get to without money he doesn't have, on one hand. They're jobs he has to be qualified to do, though.

He can apply for jobs 30 miles away but has absolutely no way to get there without some money to tax and put fuel into the car that he currently can't afford to run.

The only thing he has is a guaranteed roof over his head courtesy of a converted agricultural building he inherited. Problem is, there's a sewage pipe under the house that is venting raw sewage into the subfloor void space, and fumes into the house.

Other agencies have been to the property, tested it, and declared it unfit for human habitation until those who are responsible for fixing this do something. Normally, common sense would apply but the Welsh government has banned them from doing that sort of work, apparently the risk of getting COVID despite being double jabbed and 20 miles away from anybody who's ever actually had COVID is still bigger than the certainty of serious illness due to living above a leaking cess pit.

Said young man has now had his Universal Credit withdrawn and is being told that he literally can't expect any more financial support unless his empty fridge packs up and he needs a new empty fridge.

Can anybody offer any ideas as to how to resolve this? The poor bloke's literally at the end of his tether.

calcotti

Why has the UC been withdrawn?

NedS

If he were claiming benefits, he could get support to pay for the cost of the qualifications you mention he needs to get back into work. As @calcotti said, why isn't he able to claim UC?

pea60s52w

Don't know. The UC was stopped last week. I don't know exactly why he has been told he doesn't qualify for any benefits, only that he has been told that they were stopping it.

I do know he was being told he hadn't applied for enough work despite applying for everything within practical commutable distance except the "do not apply if you don't have X certification" jobs. I think the general advice is, apply for stuff like that anyway because it ticks the box of "at least you tried".

calcotti

If the UC has stopped because he has been sanctioned then he needs to request a Mandatory Reconsideration of the sanction decision.

(UC has nothing to do with Drakeford.)

pea60s52w

No, but Drakeford is the one who keeps locking the country down to the point where the only places near him that are trying to recruit are care homes and the NHS. Even the seasonal work is dried up.

It's so bad over there that he's been waiting for a year to sit a one week residential course to get the qualification he needs to apply for some of the jobs he can get to - the course has a waiting list of 5000 and they're currently only doing 6 people a week because they have to comply to Welsh diktats on social distancing. (Although hopefully that'll change in August, the Welsh setup is extremely risk-averse.)

poppy12345

pea60s52w said:

No, but Drakeford is the one who keeps locking the country down to the point where the only places near him that are trying to recruit are care homes and the NHS. Even the seasonal work is dried up.

The pandemic wasn't Drakeford's fault and Wales wasn't the only place to be put into lockdown. It would be helpful if you can find out why his UC has stopped because it's difficult to give any further advice otherwise.

Vegastare

Who has said the sewage cant be attended to - is Dwr  Cymru.
If not surely they should be one contact to make.

NedS

Vegastare said:

Who has said the sewage cant be attended to - is Dwr  Cymru.
If not surely they should be one contact to make.

If rural Wales, it's highly likely not the responsibility of Welsh Water, but a private septic tank and the responsibility of the property owner. Most rural properties in Wales are not connected to mains sewerage.

pea60s52w

poppy12345 said:

The pandemic wasn't Drakeford's fault and Wales wasn't the only place to be put into lockdown. It would be helpful if you can find out why his UC has stopped because it's difficult to give any further advice otherwise.

That isn't the point. For the last year even the cops in that rural area have done nothing except police COVID restrictions to the extent that you couldn't stand on the doorstep and shout hello to the person on the doorstep of the house opposite (meanwhile, forget any police interest if you get burgled or assaulted.) Lockdowns are OK, but the regime it created in Wales went beyond all sense of reason and proportion.

Vegastare said:

Who has said the sewage cant be attended to - is Dwr  Cymru.
If not surely they should be one contact to make.

Welsh Water were the ones who condemned it. It's not a septic tank on the property, it's a bunch of properties in a hamlet that are all connected to a common waste pipe which Welsh Water installed decades ago, and they are responsible for it.

The connections to the common waste pipe are in the void space of this man's house with no stench pipes or durgo valves anywhere. That's where Welsh Water have inspected, agreed the installation is beyond "noncompliant" with current regulations even if it wasn't leaking (which it is), agreed it's their responsibility to fix it, agreed that the fumes going into the house are a major health hazard... The man has already been ill because of it.

And for the last 6 months that they have said they can't send a repair crew in because COVID. Even if the crew is all hazmat suited and wearing breathing apparatus, Welsh restrictions would not let them fix it.

As of today he's now staying at a friend's house - the air in his living room has become so toxic that anyone visiting is gagging within seconds of stepping through the front door.

Raw sewage leaking under your floorboards tends to have that effect.

pea60s52w

The UC has been withdrawn apparently because they decided after him not being able to work for six months (but still nominally being not unemployed but furloughed because he had zero hours and could technically get work from that even though the industry was completely shut down by COVID) he was entitled to it for a set period of time.

That time has now elapsed.