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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Income support, JSA and tax credits  →  Thread

GPoW - DWP attempt to restrict JSA arrears to 91 days despite successful appeals

Danuta Brooke
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Welfare benefits information advice team - Derbyshire County Council

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Total Posts: 1

Joined: 21 February 2013

After winning a GPoW appeal and finally hearing from Inverness that they were not going to apply for leave to appeal to the UT, DWP tried to restrict paying JSA arrears to 91 days (they owed our client 11 months thanks to two adjourned hearings and he was actually working by the time of the third hearing). We complained to the DWP Complaints Resolution Team on the grounds that they were failing to implement the Tribunal’s decision correctly. We pointed out that neither their original decision, nor their written submissions, nor their rep’s oral evidence to the Tribunal, nor the Tribunal’s questions to the client, nor the decision, nor the Tribunal’s SoR ever restricted consideration of the client’s GPoW to 91 days.

The CRT were helpful in that after speaking to the DM, they decided of their own accord to escalate the complaint to ‘Head Office’. The DM had told them that they had restricted arrears to three months:
a) because the client had not continued to sign on, so they had no evidence that he had continued to seek work for the whole period (which should not present a problem, as he had complied with JC+ instructions not to sign on any more);
b) because they would have conducted another GPoW test after a further 91 days (raising the bizarre prospect of JC+ hauling our client in from his job to carry out a retrospective test of whether he had had a GPoW several months previously - a test he would once again have failed thanks to the absurd DM Guidance rules).

Three weeks later CRT rang to say that DWP would be paying almost £3500 in arrears into our client’s account the following week. The scenario had evidently been too ridiculous for even DWP ‘Head Office’ to countenance.