Continuing on from my recent visits to local benefits facilities I then organised a roundtable meeting at Worthing’s Job Centre at Crown House. I invited local food bank volunteers, their clients, and a manager from Citizens Advice to meet Benefits Office Manager Emma Wareham and her colleagues.
Food bank coordinators had approached me about some of the problems they had seen with people using the local facilities and we had a really useful discussion about how systems could be improved to speed up help and make sure information about all appropriate benefits is available. Everyone agreed that many of these problems would be helped when Universal Credit comes in locally in July.