When a UN inquiry ruled last week that Britain’s austerity policies amount to a “systematic violation” of disabled people’s rights, it was talking about people like Bessie.

Bessie, 51, has agoraphobia, Asperger’s and complex mental health problems, and for the last three-and-a-half years she’s lived the reality of Conservative cuts. First came the bedroom tax, taking with it £12 a week. Then she was told her lifetime disability benefit would be scrapped. And now, as the latest cruel blow, Bessie – who’s received out-of-work sickness benefits since 2012 – has been declared “fit for work”. “You get over one thing and then another hits,” she says quietly. “It’s horrendous.”

I first spoke to Bessie in 2013, six months after the bedroom tax was brought in. It had been years since she had been well enough to earn a wage – before that, she worked in her late dad’s shop and then lived off some savings – and scraping by on benefits was always hard. The evidence of that was all around her then and still is today. There’s no oven or microwave in Bessie’s kitchen. No freezer either; she got rid of that to save money. When her washing machine broke, she couldn’t afford to replace it – not even with a second-hand one.

But it was the bedroom tax that meant, for the first time in her life, Bessie was pushed into debt. With her savings gone and struggling to pay the bills, by October 2013 she had six months of rent arrears, as well as for water, gas, and electricity.

UK austerity policies 'amount to violations of disabled people's rights' Read more

To be able to eat and have some heating through the winter, Bessie had to sell jewellery she inherited from her parents: a couple of rings, a gold sovereign. “It’s awful. All gone,” she says, when we talk again this week. “I sometimes wonder what they’d think. But you have to survive, don’t you?”

And Bessie had to work hard to survive. When we last spoke in 2014, the stress of the bedroom tax – stacked on top of her agoraphobia – was making it even harder for her to leave her flat, but over the last few years she’s managed to start volunteering at her local charity shop (“I feel safe because it’s familiar,” she says). In addition, she is now half way into a part-time Open University law degree.

She’s still in debt but found charity grants to help her ward off the utility companies. Other charities helped too, with the smallest of luxuries: a new mattress (“mine had a big spring coming out,” she says); some carpet for the bare floor; and, at last, a washing machine. “I’ve got a television again now too,” she says. “I’d given it up but you have to have something, don’t you.”

Then, she finally broke free from the bedroom tax: Bessie’s council agreed to write off her rent arrears and this summer her housing association found her a one-bed flat to which she could downsize. But as hundreds of thousands of disabled people just like Bessie know, the scale of the attack on disability support means that, as you get one bit of social security back, the odds are that the government will just pull another away.

For Bessie, that happened this month when the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) informed her that after four years she’d no longer be receiving her out-of-work sickness benefit, employment and support allowance (ESA). Why? The DWP told her she neither turned up for a “fit for work” re-assessment nor filled in the form explaining her absence. In fact, Bessie says she received neither letter and hadn’t even been told when her medical would be.

Regardless, she’s now been sent to sign on for jobseeker’s allowance. That’s forcing an agoraphobic not only to look for work but get on a bus and sit in a jobcentre. “The first time I was almost in tears,” she says.

You get over one thing and then another hits. It’s horrendous. Bessie

Bessie’s appealing her “fit for work” ruling and, as she waits for the DWP’s decision, her JSA doesn’t get paid until next Thursday. That’s how this system works. The jobcentre has given her one £93 hardship loan to get her through until then – they’ll knock off £15 a week from her benefit for the privilege – but the loan came in last Monday and it’s running out fast. Food is her priority. That and topping up the electricity a couple of pounds a day. “I don’t want to put a tenner on it because I might need that for the bus to get to the jobcentre,” she explains.

Bessie’s mental health problems mean she can’t eat solid foods – she has a fear of being sick – and she lives off eight protein and nutrition drinks a day. That’s expensive on a low income, let alone no income at all: £5 a pack, £35 a week. She can’t go to a food bank. Even if they gave her soup, she has no cooker or microwave to heat it. She’s been phoning everyone she can think of for help – the jobcentre, the council, her GP. “No one does crisis loans any more,” she says.

Her utility company has let her have a pre-paid card for gas but not electricity, so she is rationing the light. The electricity is on a pre-payment meter with a weekly fee of £4 – when you’re poor, everything costs more – and the money racks up whether she uses it or not. “It’ll be £8 by 2am,” she counts.

Her disability living allowance doesn’t come in for another fortnight. Besides, she’s been told her lifetime award will end soon and she’ll need to be tested for personal independence payments. “That’s another hurdle to come,” she says.

Yesterday, I got an email from Bessie: she’s won her appeal and will be put back on ESA. Except there’s no date for when the money will come in; she just hopes it’s Monday. As a symbol of the sadistic futility of cuts, in the meantime, a disabled woman is left with nothing to live on.

“Even the bedroom tax wasn’t this bad,” she says. “It’s all made me feel like benefit claimants don’t matter.”