Good afternoon. It’s Isabella McRae here.

In exclusive Big Issue reporting, we have discovered that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is spending tens of millions of pounds every year to fight people who are appealing a decision about their disability benefits claim.

And a lot of it is essentially wasted money – in the vast majority of cases, the DWP actually loses disability benefit appeals.

It comes as the government is looking for ways it could save millions when it comes to the disability benefits system. More on that if you read to the end of this newsletter. 

But first up, we meet a couple who did something pretty incredible – they donated two homes to a homelessness charity after moving in together. They hope it will inspire others to follow suit.

If you’ve got a story to share, we want to listen. Get in touch at isabella.mcrae@bigissue.com or share your story here.

Meet the couple who gave away their two houses to help people facing homelessness

Valerie and Chris Norris from Swansea have given two four-bedroom properties to homelessness charity The Wallich so they can house people caught up in Wales’ housing crisis.

The pair, who met on a dating website nine years ago, initially leased their homes to the charity before deciding to hand them over to The Wallich, which will use them as part of its ‘alternative to bed and breakfast accommodation’ scheme.

Valerie, a retired materials engineer and novelist, said she hoped others would follow herself and retired philosophy professor and poet Chris in offering up homes to people who need them. 

“It doesn’t have to be a gesture as big as this but we, and The Wallich, are hoping that it will stimulate people to think along those lines,” she said. “We’ve had people stopping us in the street saying: ‘Oh yeah, I saw you.’ We’ve both had people that we haven’t spoken to for years who have come out of the woodwork. It’s making people think.”

Read the story.

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DWP blew tens of millions in taxpayer cash fighting disability benefit claims last year

More than £50m was spent by the DWP on staff costs to fight appeals over personal independence payment (PIP) decisions in 2023/2024.

This is enough to cover the full rate of PIP for more than 5,200 people for a year.

And in fact, the majority of appeals are won by the claimant when taken to tribunal (69%). The DWP spent £28.1m on challenging PIP appeals at tribunal stage last financial year, and that doesn't include the amount spent by the Ministry of Justice. 

Previous reporting by the Big Issue found that £350m was spent fighting PIP appeals between 2013, when the benefit was first introduced, and 2023. The latest figures put the total at more than £400m. 

This is despite the rate of fraud for PIP being extremely low at 0.0%.

The government wants to cut the disability benefit bill by hundreds of millions. Perhaps it could start by looking at how much it is spending to challenge people who should be eligible for disability benefits in the first place.

Get the story here.