As a benefits adviser, I watched countless cheats limp into my office and skip out
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Story by Jonathon Pickford, The Telegraph, 10/28/26
I worked for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) at my local Jobcentre Plus in Manchester for over 20 years, before retiring at 67 last year. For a long time, I saw first-hand how fraud was happening in the benefits system.
I distinctly remember the floor-to-ceiling window at the back of our office, overlooking the street. I would watch people hobble in, make fraudulent benefits claims, and skip out, dropping the pretence once they’d got what they were after. I couldn’t tell you how many times this happened, and it made me furious. We were rowing against very strong tides.
I imagine it is a lot worse now. Medical labels are increasingly becoming a gateway to claiming benefits. Doctors are under more pressure to sign off on sick notes. The rise of “sickfluencers” and claimants seeking advice from social media to claim personal independence payment (PIP) is unacceptable.
When I first joined, I worked as a reception manager. I would receive and forward sick notes from people who were seeking employment and support allowance (payments for sick and disabled people who are unable to work) to the relevant DWP department. Then I became a disability employment adviser for 12 years before becoming a Universal Credit “work coach”.
In my time as a disability adviser, which I enjoyed, I would speak to people with various health conditions who were claiming Universal Credit. Many of these people would also be claiming PIP and were required to come in and physically “sign on” to benefits. When I worked as a work coach, my diary would include eight to 10 face-to-face appointments a day to speak with and support claimants.
In all of these roles, I got a feel for how people learnt to get around the system.
When people were rightfully claiming, you could see the gratitude in their eyes. I am disabled myself, and I took up the job after suffering a serious motorbike accident when I was 19. It forced me to abandon my dream of taking over my father’s family butchers, and instead work in a more sedentary role. It broke my heart.
Consequently, I am not just angry when someone claims benefits wrongfully. I know what it is like to take the painkillers they are describing, and I know when they are over-emphasising their condition. I have lived most of my life needing assistance to walk, having had five hip replacements.
I do not have the answer for how to fix the system, but from my experience, we lost control during the Covid pandemic. Our Jobcentre would be alerted to proxies who were being paid £50 to falsely sign people on to Universal Credit. It was insulting. We would report them to the DWP, and it was picked up in the papers, but it was still hard to regulate.
We would also be alerted to claimants who would go to different Jobcentres all over the country to try and sign on to benefits. They would bounce around, seeing whether they could go unnoticed, making claim after claim.
During this time, the Government also scrapped face-to-face assessments. It became an open house for false claims. Now, due to the general conversation on social media, even more people feel that they have the right to sign on.
Another loophole people would exploit was amending their claims outside the office after they had been approved. An individual would come in and make a claim for Universal Credit. Then, sitting in their car, they would add false “children” to their already approved claim to make them eligible for a higher amount. They wouldn’t even bother to make up names. They would say their “children” were called “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”. This happened multiple times, and it used to drive my colleagues and me mad.
Of course, we would flag it as fraudulent, but not many would be prosecuted. By the time it went through the system, they had been on benefits for weeks. There was not the manpower or resources to go chasing after the number of people who would do this.
In terms of the disabilities that people would often use to make claims, back issues used to be the most common, but by the time I retired, it had changed to stress and anxiety.
Another big issue was sick notes. Doctors would pretty much sign people off work for anything. They can feel under a lot of pressure when claimants come to them. Some would be because of “stress at home”, with no further explanation. In recent years, I noticed more sick notes were for “stress” or from people who were signing off sick because they had autism. I know plenty of autistic people who hold down jobs. It was ridiculous.
Working on reception, I had no personal interaction with anyone who would submit a sick note with the purpose of claiming relevant benefits. Typically, Citizens Advice would tell people to send their note to a Jobcentre, employed or not. I would scan it, and if I thought there was something amiss, I could report it to the DWP fraud department, who would investigate.
I did not know the decision maker, and they did not know me. I was not allowed to make the decision about whether someone should receive payments from the state while off sick. I felt like I was a tiny cog in the huge machine of the DWP.
Back when sick notes were physical, I remember the post box at work being stuffed to the brim every Monday morning. It was comical. Now, the system is all online. Luckily, it is not a physical wooden box any more, as the current volume of sick leave requests would cause it to overflow.
The DWP fraud department was very busy. Following up on a fraudulent claim could take six weeks or even six months. It would often cost more to investigate the fraud than the money that was claimed, so it would be dropped.
When I became an adviser, I developed a gut instinct for when people were lying to me. I would ask them whether they were telling the truth. Often people tried to pull the wool over my eyes when claiming benefits. One person I remember arrived in brand new trainers and an expensive jacket. I said to him: “I know you’re working.” I asked him to come in multiple days a week to physically sign on to benefits. We never saw him again.
It would make me angry – it would make everybody angry. Once I complained to my district manager, he told me not to worry about it and said the false claims were a drop in the ocean to the DWP.
I am not surprised a recent government review found that the welfare system is leading to soaring demand for ADHD and autism diagnoses. I worked within this system, and I watched this upward curve for years. The whole system is stuck in a negative cycle.
The more fundamental problem, though, is that there appears to be very little resilience among the growing number of young people signing on now – and the welfare system is encouraging that. I am sure this is going to harm a generation.
As told to Blaise Cloran.