Every weekday Andrew Murkin comes to Downham Market library for books, wifi and – most importantly – warmth.

Murkin, who is 63 and receives disability benefits, lives in a bungalow in the Norfolk town and as his energy bills rose this winter he decided to heat only one room for two hours a day.

“In the winter I come to the library to keep warm,” he said. “I like to get up early. But sitting at home is miserable in the cold.”

At weekends, when his local library is mostly closed, he has few options. “In winter I just sit at home with my coat on and a duvet on,” he said. “I’ve been wearing two T-shirts, two jumpers and a coat inside. A lot of my friends do the same.”

The plight of Elsie, a 77-year-old who ate one meal a day and travelled on buses to stay warm, became emblematic of the cost of living crisis after Boris Johnson was confronted with her story in a Good Morning Britain interview. Her case has highlighted the challenges faced by older people unable to meet the cost of rising bills.

In Downham Market, near King’s Lynn, the library is a lifeline for older and vulnerable people looking for somewhere warm to pass time without spending money.

The south of the town has the ward with the highest proportion of pensioners in England and Wales, with 57% over-65. Many of them rely on the library.

The planned tightening of the benefits system is “deeply concerning” and could have “serious negative consequences” on claimants’ mental health, according to a leading body representing psychologists in the UK.

The warning from the British Psychological Society (BPS) comes after work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey last month hailed a new government target to get 500,000 jobseekers back into work by June.

Under the existing benefits rules, individuals claiming universal credit while looking for work are given three months to find a job in their preferred sector – or face the possibility of sanctions.

But under changes expected to be ushered in next month, claimants will have to apply for roles outside their area after just four weeks. They risk having their benefits cut if they are deemed not to be making “reasonable efforts” to secure a job in any sector.

Ms Coffey said the move would ensure people can get “any job now” while critics warned it would force some skilled workers to accept insecure, short-term employment.

The devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have called on the UK government to rethink plans to end the universal credit uplift.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak plans to stop the extra £20-a-week payment in October – saying it is only temporary measure to help people through the pandemic.

But there are growing calls for it to be extended or made permanent.

Ministers from Holyrood, Cardiff and Stormont have raised concerns about the impact the cut will have on poverty.

They wrote a joint letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, describing the change as the “biggest overnight reduction to a basic rate of social security since the modern welfare state began, more than 70 years ago”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week he wanted the focus to be on better paid jobs, rather than welfare. He was speaking after two Tory MPs joined calls for the uplift to be made permanent.

MPs have demanded landlords and letting agents end the practice of screening out people on benefits after hearing claims that “no DSS” clauses have become the 2019 equivalent of “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs” notices.

During a hearing into the widespread refusal of landlords to rent properties to those on benefits, the Commons work and pensions select committee on Wednesday confronted the director of Your Move, a national online lettings agency, with an advert it published in March for a home in Telford, Shropshire, that read: “No DSS. Small dogs considered.”

They also drew admissions from leading lettings agencies Hunters and Your Rent that they still run “no DSS” adverts, despite rising opposition to the practice, which Derek Thomas MP said amounted to a “hostile environment” for tenants on benefits.

Heather Wheeler, the housing minister, said last month she wanted to tackle the practice of “no DSS”, but it remains widespread. One current advert for a three-bedroom house in Cheshire reads: “Small Dogs Considered (higher deposit), NO DSS, NO SMOKERS.”

Another for a property in Cornwall seems to be trying to avoid using the letters DSS and instead says: “No —. Small dogs considered.”

In 2017-18, 889,000 households in the private sector needed housing benefit to pay their rent and the housing charity Shelter said the “no DSS” practice breached equality law because it disproportionately affects women and people with disabilities. Renters say it means they have less choice, standards are lower and costs higher.

Many of Britain’s poorest people are missing out on benefits to which they are entitled, a report published this week has claimed.

According to the report, “Falling through the cracks,” unemployed or very low earners are missing out on at least £73 per week.

The paper, by the Resolution Foundation, found that around 300,000 of those in need of financial support are not claiming unemployment benefits that they are entitled to – with older people, particularly women aged 55-64, and younger men comprising most of this group.

Currently the value of Jobseekers Allowance or standard Universal Credit for those aged 25 and over is £73.10 per week, but it is thought that many could be missing out on much more if they are also entitled to benefits such as maternity grants, energy discounts or free school meals.

The Resolution Foundation attributes this group of “forgotten unemployed” to policymakers having ignored the growing gap between the number of unemployed people and the amount claiming unemployment benefits that has emerged since the late 1990s – although it notes that in many instances unemployed people have good reason to not claim benefits, such as living with a working partner.

The Government has failed to deliver the £4bn of savings it was expecting to make after cutting disability benefit, according to new analysis.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the Government was hoping to cut spending by 20 per cent by moving from the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payments (PIP).

Forecasts initially predicted £13.6bn would be spent on disability benefits in 2018-2019 but now this figure is thought to be £18bn.

The work and pensions secretary said he would like to see a trial scheme in Manchester rolled out nationwide after it was given “very strong feedback”.

The Trussell Trust, which operates food banks, says the facilities were used more than one million times in 2014-15.

It welcomed closer co-operation but said talks were needed over the feasibility of the job adviser idea.

Speaking at a meeting of the Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee, Mr Duncan Smith said: “I am trialling at the moment a job adviser situating themselves in the food bank for the time that the food bank is open and we are already getting very strong feedback about that.”

The Trussell Trust said it applauded efforts to get food banks and Job Centres to work together.

“We welcome the government’s interest in exploring new ways that the DWP might help people at food banks who have hit crisis as a result of problems with welfare delivery,” it said.

“But we would also suggest that there first needs to be a dialogue between the DWP and The Trussell Trust network about the possible challenges and opportunities that hosting DWP advisers in foodbanks could afford.

“The Trussell Trust has had positive discussions with some MPs about whether piloting DWP advisers in their local food banks could be beneficial, but we have not yet had the opportunity for dialogue with Iain Duncan Smith or DWP advisers about the feasibility of rolling out this idea.”

If the trial was successful and other food banks are willing, he said he would like to roll it out across the UK.

Generous welfare benefits actually make people more likely to want work, not less, according to the latest scientific research into the matter.

A new study, published in the journal Work, Employment and Society, flies in the face of conventional wisdom in Britain – where a narrative that people become ‘trapped on benefits’ has taken hold amongst commentators

Researchers asked 19,000 people across 18 European countries whether they agreed with the statement “I would enjoy having a paid job even if I did not need the money”.

They found that people in countries with more generous unemployment and sickness benefits were significantly more likely to have a positive attitude towards getting a job.

“Many scholars and commentators fear that generous social benefits threaten the sustainability of the welfare state due to work norm erosion, disincentives to work and dependency cultures,” the researchers said.

“[This study] concludes that there are few signs that groups with traditionally weaker bonds to the labour market are less motivated to work if they live in generous and activating welfare states.”

One in six family doctors has been asked to refer a patient to a food bank in the past year, a new survey has found, with GPs reporting that benefits delays are leaving people without money for food for weeks on end.There are even rare reported cases of people visiting their GP with “sicknesses caused by not eating”, the leading food bank charity said.

Rising food poverty in the UK – driven by a combination of rising prices, stagnant wages, and reforms to welfare – has been described as an emerging “public health emergency” by academics and evidence from GP surgeries is matched by hospital diagnoses of malnutrition, which have nearly doubled in the past five years.

Comedian Frank Skinner turned down a narrating job on Channel 4 documentary Benefits Street because he did not want to criticise Birmingham on television.

The Room 101 host grew up just outside the city in Oldbury, and was wary of how the show planned to present local people.

Skinner was asked by the broadcaster to do the voice-over after being told that the series would explore “community spirit” in Winson Green’s impoverished James Turner Street.

But he told the Birmingham Mail that he had refused the offer as he did not want involve himself in “something where I’m derogatory about people from Birmingham”.

“I imagine there would be a lot of awkward moments in the recording studio when I said, ‘I’m not going to say that’,” he explained. “They only showed me a very small part of a five-episode series, and I wondered what the rest would be like.”