DWP change catches out Mull man

A DISABLED man on Mull faces becoming ‘a prisoner in his own house’, when the UK government removes his car this month due to changing welfare benefits.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has ordered Alex Fletcher, who lives in Bunessan, to return his car by the end of May because he fails to qualify for it under the new Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

The 61-year-old told The Oban Times: ‘I’ve got arthritis in almost every joint of my body. It’s painful. It’ll take me an hour to walk 50 yards to the shops. Without my car, I’m going to be a prisoner in my own house.’

Mr Fletcher spent his career in construction, building roads for Argyll and Bute Council until he was retired on doctor’s orders in 2010.

‘I was told I was to be pensioned off, as unfit to work,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to retire: at the time I was thinking how am I going to live?’

Since his medical retirement, Mr Fletcher has qualified for the use of a car to travel around Mull independently under the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) – until the government rolled out its PIP replacement, which he failed to understand when re-applying for his disability benefits.

‘I didn’t know anything about it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get hold of the lady who helps me with the forms and I only had a couple of days to fill it in. I made a balls-up.’

His confusion arose, he explained, because instead of the DLA’s three categories – higher, middle and lower – PIP only gave two categories – higher and lower. He recalled the PIP form asking how far could he walk.

‘At that time it was between 20 and 24 metres, which put me in the lower category,’ he explained. ‘You have to be in the higher category for the car. To qualify you can only walk under 20m. Now I’m lucky to do 20 metres.’

A week ago the government’s Motability Scheme, which leases cars to disabled people, sent Mr Fletcher a letter asking him to return the Peugeot 308 to a dealer in Campbeltown by May 31, 2016.

‘It’s going to be very hard without the car,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a lot of hospital appointments.’

He said that half-hour appointments at Mull and Iona Communty Hospital in Craignure could take up to five hours by the island’s public transport, while taking the bus and ferry to Oban’s Lorn and District General Hospital could involve a 12-hour day. ‘It’s not doing my legs or feet any good,’ he said.

‘Sitting in public transport can be very painful. They’ve got kneeling buses, but the bus drivers say they don’t always go low enough for my needs. We are lucky in that the community raised enough money to buy a community minibus to get people to appointments, but that only works if I’m the only one who needs to get to a certain place at a certain time. It’s very hard to work out a situation that would work for everybody. Either they’re knackered or I’m knackered.

‘I can manage, but it’s going to be a struggle,’ he said. ‘I have started an appeal, but that could take months. I hope it works, I have to try.’

The DWP is offering Mr Fletcher, as it does others leaving the Motability Scheme, ‘a one off £2,000 transitional support package’. But to receive the package he must return his car to the dealer on or before May 31, even if he has lodged an appeal.

Mr Fletcher added that he was keen to raise awareness about the DWP changes so others are not caught out.