Jobcentre closures are blow to claimants

With fellow Green activists and local candidates I recently took part in a walk from Bridgeton Jobcentre to Shettleston Jobcentre.

Bridgeton, like Cambuslang, is one of the seven jobcentres the DWP proposes to close in the Glasgow area, with claimants at Bridgeton being transferred to Shettleston, while claimants from Cambuslang will be transferred to Rutherglen.

These proposals are extremely worrying.

The further away a jobcentre is, the more difficult and expensive it is for people to get assistance and support to find work.

Making it harder for claimants to attend the jobcentre makes it more likely they’ll miss appointments, increasing the risk of sanctions.

How does this improve people’s chances of getting into employment?

We walked on a cold but dry day.

It took us, a group of reasonably fit people, around an hour and these two jobcentres are only marginally further apart than Rutherglen and Cambuslang.

We didn’t have to make the return journey and we won’t have to do it again in a fortnight.

We are also concerned that the impact of the closures will particularly be felt by disabled people or older people less able to make this journey.

It will also impact those with caring responsibilities, who will have to make arrangements to have children or relatives looked after.

The alternative will be to take their children or relatives with them, with the resultant additional costs, stress and walking time.

The jobcentre closures are simply the next phase of and attack on social security, euphemistically known as welfare reform.

Welfare reform has in reality been about making it harder for people to prove their entitlement to benefits and reducing the level of those benefits.

Having created these bureaucratic barriers to support, the DWP is now going further by setting up physical barriers.