I’m writing to you as a Walthamstow resident who has contacted me as your MP in the last eight months regarding an online campaign.
I want to apologise for the lack of response you have received and explain why this has been the case and to offer you details as to the way in which I intend to manage responding to these campaigns. As the Walthamstow MP I have a team of five staff who work with me on everything from responding to emails and letters, to helping lead community action on issues like legal loan sharking and violence against women and working with residents who are requesting assistance.
The parliamentary authority has refused my request for additional resources to manage the requests made by residents in Walthamstow- a matter I raised in parliament and you can read this debate here. If you wish to express your concerns about the impact of this on my capacity to represent Walthamstow you can contact IPSA via email on info@parliamentarystandards.org.uk.
As I will not exploit the many offers I get for unpaid interns I am not currently able to offer the level and speed of response to residents required given the correspondence I receive. I therefore wanted to be transparent about the difficult decisions I have had to make about priorities for the limited resources we have. With increases in destitution and deprivation in our area and cuts to other services reducing alternative sources of assistance, I have decided to focus our efforts primarily on these cases and the parliamentary work I have undertaken for policy proposals to address the root causes of matters such as tackling legal loan sharking.
To give you some idea of the scale of challenge we face, currently there are around 4,500 people out of work in Walthamstow and a further 4,500 people in receipt of Employment Support Allowance. Since the introduction of some changes to our welfare system in 2012, we have seen an increase in the numbers of residents seeking advice or wishing to complain about the impact of these changes on them and their families. Following discussions with Revenue Services Officers at Waltham Forest Council we anticipate there are 13,000 new council tax payers in Waltham Forest, 1,300 affected by the ‘bedroom tax’ and a further 700 by the housing benefit cap. Whilst I have tried over the course of the last nine months to introduce policies and partnerships to address the impact of these changes on local residents, it is clear these changes have caused substantial distress.
In addition to this, my office is experiencing an increase in requests from those who are struggling in the current economic climate in general. Personal debt in Walthamstow is rising, and our local Citizens Advice Bureau has reported helping over 3,200 people in the last year to write off around £3 million worth of debt. As well as contacting professional debt advice services, we are seeing an rise in people coming to seek advice on both debt and the causes of debt- e.g. loss of work, leaseholder issues, rental increases, consumer rights- as part of coping with these problems. These requests for assistance are in addition to the requests for information on matters such as local health and education services, parking, bin collection, social services, immigration services and legal cases or more general enquiries about a number of sometimes obscure and complex issues. In total last year we dealt with over 3,200 such pieces of personal casework.
The reduction in alternative sources of support for residents is also creating an increase in requests for my help. For example, the loss of legal aid funding has led to the closure of one of our local Citizens Advice Bureau offices, meaning an increase in waiting times for residents to secure an appointment at the remaining office. There is also no independent housing advice service for residents here. During the last year we have been contacted by over 250 people who had concerns about their housing provision- this is an increase of 50% on the previous year.
It is within this context that I have received around 4,500 campaign emails or postcards. To give some idea of the scale of this, recent examples of this include over 600 post cards and emails regarding the proposal to introduce same sex marriage, 370 emails in one week about the ‘fair tax on flying’ and 200 emails about changes to the NHS in two days. To address the challenges this volume of contact with parliamentarians creates for the effectiveness of such campaigns for which I am supportive I recently organised a round table to ask how we can better support their involvement in the political process. You can read a blog about this here from one of the attendees.
To date, my team have counted up 113 different campaigns which we are now seeking to share with the relevant government departments collectively so that your concerns have been included in their considerations. You will therefore over the coming months begin to receive the responses we secure from the Government departments. This process will continue throughout the rest of the year, subject to the alternative demands placed on my team by personal casework and campaigns activities which I have decided to prioritise. This therefore means there will continue to be substantial delays on my ability to process these requests and I want to be as open and transparent about this for those who wish to raise concerns in this way. I would also encourage residents to sign up to my weekly e-newsletter which sets out the debates and campaigns in which I am involved and where you can find me in person to raise issues.
Whilst I know this email may providing disappointing news I hope it is of interest in explaining how I have decided to manage the resources I have to serve Walthamstow,
With kind regards
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