Thanks for pointing out the reality to people who haven't seen it. I know that in my case, I wasn't expecting to get ill and lose my job, and while the money to live on for food, transport and bills (£57 a week) came through within a few weeks, my Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit took THREE months before anything came through. During that three months I had to pay my rent and council tax - my two biggest single outgoings - entirely out of my small amount of savings, the money the government said I needed to live on, and whatever I could borrow from friends. I then spent a further FIVE months in a limbo emergency situation of only getting half of my rent and council tax paid - still having to find the rest from the money the government said I needed to live on, or face eviction - while the council tried to sort their paperwork out. None of this was due to errors on my part. It is the system that you can expect to deal with. And you deal with it on top of being ill. I was lucky, I had savings. A lot of people don't. They have payments to make on their car or the loan they got to fix up the house, because who thinks they'll suddenly get ill and land on benefits?