There Are No Toilet Facilities In Jobcentres

Same Difference has been aware for some time that it is difficult for claimants to use the toilet at the JobCentre. We have never agreed with the policy.

But we didn’t realise, until reading respected blog Vox Political this afternoon, that there are actually  no public toilets in Job Centres.

Nor is there a private area for benefit claimants who have to inject medication.

So, readers, we ask you, what does someone with diabetes do when they won’t make it home from the JobCentre in time to inject their insulin?

Pay for a public toilet near the jobcentre, if they can find one? Inject in public, trying to ignore the stares of people who think they are injecting drugs of another kind in a public place?

Or delay their dose to avoid embarrassment, leading to potentially life threatening situations?

Vox Political continues:

A response to a Freedom of Information request, dated March 2 last year, states that “Public toilet facilities are not provided in Jobcentres. However, where there is a medical need, our Jobcentre managers have discretion to make judgments on allowing claimants to use toilet facilities in our Jobcentres. These decisions are subject to constraints in certain locations caused by the layout of the building and keeping people safe. If toilet facilities are not in the public area, use of them is only provided if they can be effectively managed with suitable control measures – for example, controlling access by escorting claimants to and from those areas.”

When people with Crohn’s are being refused toilet use, as you will see if you click the first link above, how can we be sure that staff are really using their discretion?

It’s toilet use, readers. Toilet use. It is the most basic human right on Earth. The most basic right on Earth for any living thing. Most people with any sense wouldn’t deny toilet use to their pets.

Vox Political suggests that by denying toilet use in JobCentres, the DWP is in breach of the Human Rights Act and its prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.

Same Difference could not agree more. Yet apart from occasional coverage of individual cases by a few blogs and newspapers, this is being ignored.

Why?

We could say that it is because benefit claimants are somehow considered less than human.

Yet, readers, if pet owners were denying toilet use to their pets, and  they got found out, it wouldn’t be surprising  if every media organisation with the slightest reputation broke down front doors to free said pets and caused a national outrage.