News

7 January 2010

In our last newsletter we included a request by BBC Scotland for people who had experienced problems claiming ESA to contact them.

We warned the producer not to expect too much as many claimants are very reluctant to talk to the media for fear that either they will be misrepresented or that it might in some way cause problems for them with the DWP.

So we were delighted to hear back from the producer of the programme, Kathy Long, that:

“We have been overwhelmed with people getting in touch to tell us their stories and share their experiences, which has been fantastic - immensely useful and has also flagged up some other issues relating to ESA which we weren't previously aware of.

“Hopefully we will be featuring one or two people from the site in our programme and having been able to speak to so many people experiencing similar problems is brilliant in terms of research and background knowledge.”

So many thanks to everyone who contacted BBC Scotland.  It seems that there is an unprecedented degree of anger and concern about the way this new benefit is being administered and people are prepared to speak out.