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

JSA and rules on temporary minor illness

Carol Laidlaw
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Oldham Citizens Advice Bureau

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Total Posts: 68

Joined: 20 June 2013

Can anyone please point me towards the current rules on claiming JSA and being temporarily unable to work due to minor injury or short illness (eg, cut that requires stitching in hospital surgery department, colds and flu, stomach bug)? The old rule used to be that any illness or minor injury that rendered a person unable to work for less than two weeks - the usual signing on interval - was not counted as making the person unavailable for work and their JSA claim could continue. I can find no reference to any similar rule in the current edition of the Welfare Rights Handbook.
I ask specifically because a client on the work programme has been told by the staff there that she is only “allowed” three days of illness in any year, and she will get her JSA sanctioned if she takes a fourth day. 
I have come across this excremental rule in the employment contracts of certain companies who choose to treat their staff like disposable tissues (that is, take one day off sick, you get a warning; take a second day you get a written warning; take a third day sick you get sacked, regardless of what the illness is.)  But I have never heard of it in the rules for JSA.
And not that I expect work programme staff to necessarily know what they’re talking about, of course. But my client needs to know the rules so she has something to quote at them if they cause her any trouble for being unwell.

Jon (CANY)
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Welfare benefits - Craven CAB, North Yorkshire

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Like you say, JSA reg 55 currently allows 2 x 2 weeks sickness per year.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/207/regulation/55/made

[Perhaps JCP were trying to refer to a limit of 3 periods of sickness in any 12 month period, rather than days? If so, that’s not the current rule either]

It’s described in the DMG at 20961, if you want to quote something at them.

From next week this actually gets extended to 13 weeks allowable sickness while on JSA (presumbaly to dissuade all the sick people on that benefit from trying to claim ESA instead):
http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/welfare-rights/news/item/extension-of-jobseekers-allowance-sickness-periods

[ Edited: 25 Mar 2015 at 01:02 am by Jon (CANY) ]
Paul_Treloar_CPAG
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Advice and Rights Team, Child Poverty Action Group

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Joined: 30 June 2014

Rules around being unwell when claiming JSA are covered on p.50-51 of WBH 2014/15, and these cross-refer to p.695 also.