![\"Walton](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_3153.jpeg\")
Sue Carson is who people turn to. Image: Greg Barradale\/Big Issue<\/p>\nCarson, 60, runs the Bridge Community Centre, operating out of an old pub in the Walton constituency of Liverpool. They\u2019re here five days a week, dishing out advice and fighting on people\u2019s behalf. By Carson\u2019s count, they\u2019re up to 180 \u201cwins\u201d a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife\u2019s too short. If you\u2019re entitled and you\u2019ve got that factual, actual information from the GP surgery or the hospitals and everything else, then I will fight for you all day long,\u201d Carson says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just about nine til five in here, you\u2019re talking right the way through the night. I get messages one o\u2019clock, two o\u2019clock in the morning, struggling,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Sue Carson is who people turn to. Image: Greg Barradale\/Big Issue<\/p>\n
A city in the firing line<\/p>\n
The Labour Party Conference is in Liverpool with the party on the ropes. Had Keir Starmer got his way this year, the city would have suffered.<\/p>\n
The attention of the country \u2013 or at least the media and political classes \u2013 will for a few days focus on the dockside ACC Conference Centre<\/a>. But away from the cameras, a little bit to the north west, the debate over the government\u2019s direction could have a profound impact.<\/p>\n Liverpool Walton, where the Bridge is located, holds a distinction: of any constituency in the UK, it has the highest rate of disability benefits claimants. Some 18.6% of the working age population are in receipt of PIP, amounting to 12,095 people out of 65,056.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n Four constituencies in the city \u2013 Walton, Knowsley, Bootle, and West Derby \u2013 are in the top 15 in the country for PIP claimants. Across just those four areas, Liverpool\u2019s economy would have seen almost \u00a3100 million vanish a year from Labour\u2019s planned benefit cuts, a report from Health Equity North found.<\/a><\/p>\n Walton would have been hit harder than almost anywhere else, with an estimated \u00a326.2m disappearing from the constituency\u2019s economy \u2013 amounting to \u00a3403 per person.<\/p>\n The link between poverty and disability is strong: the areas hardest hit by potential cuts already have worse general health and struggling local economies, one study found earlier this year. Walton ranks third highest in the country for constituencies on the Index of Multiple Deprivation<\/a> measure.<\/p>\n As a government searching for its soul came to the city, I was in Walton to discover what life is like for those on benefits<\/a>, who is trying to help them, and where we go next.<\/p>\n \u2018I can eat decent food\u2019<\/p>\n Sue Carson doesn\u2019t skirt around calling Walton deprived. She\u2019s got a good view of the sharp end. She used to claim benefits herself for an anxiety disorder, but couldn\u2019t face dealing with the system. \u201cI had to literally walk away,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n For Diane, without the money it brings in, she\u2019d struggle to leave the house. \u201cMine\u2019s a condition where eventually I\u2019ll be paralysed from the waist down,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m that severe I don\u2019t have to have the checks every three years.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n She adds: \u201cI\u2019m lost without either a wheelchair or a scooter. My scooter\u2019s broken down at the moment, so I\u2019m relying on my wheelchairs til that\u2019s repaired. If I didn\u2019t have that money, I\u2019d be in the house constantly, and I\u2019d really struggle mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n Now the money\u2019s coming through, James can see a change in his life. \u201cIt\u2019s made a big difference. I know now I can go to the shops, I can buy me daughter something, I can eat decent food,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The politics of fear<\/p>\n In 2017, Liverpool City Council added up the cost of austerity on the city<\/a>. It found that more than 55,000 families in the city had lost out, producing a month-by-month list of how benefits and spending cuts had hit residents. Another report found<\/a> the council\u2019s spending power fell by 35% from 2011 to 2014, equating to \u00a3780 per person per year lost. If you take the findings of another study<\/a> \u2013 that each \u00a3100 reduction in funding cut lives by 1.3 and 1.2 months for men and women respectively \u2013 then austerity made life 10 months shorter for the residents of Liverpool. By 2020, the council was on the brink of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n It was on this landscape that Labour\u2019s benefits plans cast a shadow.<\/p>\n Labour had planned to make it harder to get PIP \u2013 with claimants having to score more points on a single measure to qualify. By the government\u2019s own measures, it would have seen 430,000 applicants a year rejected by 2030.<\/p>\n But a revolt from MPs meant Starmer was unable to get it through, abandoning the plans<\/a>. In the meantime, PIP cuts are off the table until the Timms Review<\/a>, due in autumn 2026, concludes.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n New secretary Pat McFadden has so far not signalled a different direction. \u201cThere are at least a proportion of people on long-term sickness and disability benefits who, with the right support in place, could work,\u201d he told the Telegraph in an interview after his appointment, promising not to assess people and then \u201cforget about them forevermore\u201d.<\/p>\n Mo Stewart, a fellow at the Centre for Welfare Reform<\/a> and research lead of the Preventable Harm Project<\/a>, says the new government\u2019s rhetoric around disability benefits<\/a> follows a tradition dating back to Margaret Thatcher. \u201cThatcher\u2019s cabinet decided the only way to break the psychological security of the welfare state was to adopt what they called the politics of fear. And every administration since then has been gradually reforming various social security policies to bring in the politics of fear, to make it more and more difficult,\u201d says Stewart.<\/p>\n \u201cThe PIP assessments<\/a> are diabolical. People have killed themselves because of them. It isn\u2019t easy to get access to PIP. So if a large number of people in any area has been awarded, that means there\u2019s a large amount of chronic ill health in that particular area.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018We watch people deteriorate in front of us\u2019<\/p>\n In the middle of Walton village, squeezed between a nursery and a boxing gym, Jo Abela welcomes me to the Our House community hub.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had an opportunity to move out plenty of times and I don\u2019t,\u201d she tells me of Walton. \u201cI feel completely safe, so much so that I\u2019ve raised four kids. It is lovely. It has its problems, obviously. A lot of the problems come to poverty<\/a>, drugs, alcohol, self medication.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n While working as a teacher in 2019, Abela and a friend took a leap of faith and took over the empty space which is now Our House. \u201cI just saw a need,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThe loneliness, the isolation. The mental health was just so clear and obvious. And maybe I had experience of that with previous jobs, and you grow old, you get it, you know what you\u2019re looking at. The poverty, the food poverty. I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s always been there, or maybe my eyes just became open to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ask 47-year-old Abela what goes on at Our House and the list is breathless:\u00a0yoga, circuit training, mental health courses written and delivered by her and business partner Julie, the garden, the cafe, the Streetwise project, bingo, quizzes, arts and crafts, sociology courses, computer courses, dance classes.<\/p>\n Abela\u2019s team doesn\u2019t directly give advice on disability benefits, but she sees the impact poor health and struggles to get benefits can have.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had people that, in my opinion, are entitled to PIP. You see them phsyically struggling to walk, to breathe. You couldn\u2019t put these people into full time work, they couldn\u2019t function,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n And yet there is a lack of wider support to send people on. \u201cWhere else do you send them? Honestly we get people coming in with raggedy envelopes and papers, and they\u2019re upset, and they don\u2019t know where to go,\u201d Abela says.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n When people struggle to get appointments they need, Abela says, \u201cwe watch them deteriorate in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n They try to offer a way back through volunteering, which can be a stepping stone back into paid work. \u201cThat\u2019s the way they\u2019ve been brought up, with that work ethic. \u2018I want to keep working, and I want to give back to my community,\u2019\u201d Abela says.<\/p>\n When I ask Abela for her guess as to why Walton has more disability benefits claimants than anywhere else, she offers a theory, suspecting it might have less to do with existing residents changing circumstances, and more with gradual changes to who lives in the area, with cheap land and property prices drawing people in. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole estate that was put aside for women escaping domestic violence, partners in prison,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd none of them were from around here. It was like, let\u2019s just take that group and let\u2019s place them in Walton. I\u2019m not saying there\u2019s anything wrong with that, there\u2019s absolutely not, but it increases our statistics massively.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Sometimes the obvious explanations are obvious for a reason, though. Poverty. Walton ranks third in the country<\/a> on the Index of Multiple Deprivation measure. Lives are shorter here: a baby born in 2022 could expect to live for 78.23 years<\/a>, almost three years less than the national average of 81.01 years.<\/p>\n Child poverty rates in the area increased from 20.3% in 2015 to 33.1% in 2024, and compare to an overall UK rate of 21.8%. Put bluntly, one in three children in the area live in relative poverty, amounting to 6,692 young people.<\/p>\n For professor David Taylor-Robinson, professor of public health and policy at the University of Liverpool and co-director of the Northern Health Science Alliance<\/a>, it all comes back to child poverty. Growing up in poverty causes mental health problems and other chronic illnesses early in life, leading to high use of disability benefits.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n \u201cPoverty is the big issue. Either you believe that people are feckless and not working hard enough, and the solution is for people to just buck up and stop claiming benefits. That\u2019s one line of argument. But the evidence shows that people who end up on disability benefits, it\u2019s related to population ill-health,\u201d Taylor-Robinson says.<\/p>\n \u201cI always talk about the Kensington in Liverpool here, and Kensington in London. There\u2019s a 10-year gap in life expectancy and a 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy. It\u2019s not because people are lazy in Kensington, it\u2019s because they get sicker earlier, and it\u2019s crystal clear what we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n As Carson talks about the process of going through benefits assessments, she says: \u201cIt\u2019s annihilating, it\u2019s absolutely, astronomically annihilating\u201d.<\/p>\n She adds: \u201cIf you don\u2019t re-appeal, the system\u2019s won. There\u2019s a lot of people getting forgotten and falling through that net.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reader-funded since 1991 \u2013 Big Issue brings you trustworthy journalism that drives real change.<\/strong><\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_3156.jpeg\")
An old pub in Walton now serves as a hub for those on the frontline of the benefits crisis. Image: Greg Barradale\/Big Issue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_3159.jpeg\")
Jo Abela (right) quit her teaching job to set up the community centre. Image: Greg Barradale\/Big Issue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Support-journalism-in-article-CTA.png\")
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