More fun with people who should have got CBJSA

A colleague just pointed this out:

Claimant was working until early June when he was laid off. Had worked full time for approx. 3 years, he’s single, so he should have been assessed for CB-JSA, but was sent down the UC route.

After 6 weeks, he got his decision, which was that he’s entitled to £0. He did have some earnings, but not enough to make UC ‘Nil’.

In the absence of a UC decision letter, nobody has any way of checking that calculation. So we made a complaint.

We were told that his award wasn’t made £0 because of his level of earnings, but because he earned in excess of £338 in the first 7 waiting days – which is an automatic nil award.

But DWP have no way of picking this up until the end of the first assessment period, some 6 weeks after the claim was made.

There are differences between the JSA and the UC regs in terms of income from employment after the employment contract has ended. The JSA regs always seem more generous (no wonder they’ve changed!) so he is penalised – heavily – for them incorrectly processing a UC claim.

The remedy:

DWP say that claimant needs to submit a “wholly retrospective old-style CB-JSA claim” by telephone, explaining that he’s only just found out that he is not entitled to UC due to receiving wages in the first 7 days of his claim.

The preventative measure:

Advice from DWP – when we speak to newish UC claimants that are going to fall foul of the automatic £0 award rule if they received more than £338 earnings in the first 7 days after their UC claim is that they should call the UC Service Centre to explain they’ve now received earnings above £338 and to ask for their UC claim to be terminated, which should be the advice of the call handler anyway.

This should then allow them to make a telephone CB-JSA claim sooner, and that their backdating request to the UC initial claim date should be accepted.

Note – the £338 question was part of the gateway, designed to filter out whether JSA or UC was more appropriate. If the claimant answered yes, they were expecting to have earnings of more than £338, it should have directed them to JSA rather than UC.

Of course, clients don’t know when or if they’re going to either get more earnings – either from former employer or new employment.

What’s concerning is that this question has now been stripped from the gateway. I’ve checked online today!

So more people will go through the gateway onto UC that would have qualified for CB-JSA.

And don’t forget there is also potentially HB that would have been awarded had they correctly identified his CB-JSA at the outset

[new,simpler system folks!]

My understanding of regulation 13 is that the housing benefit should also be backdated, if claimed within a month of him being informed that he is not entitled to UC.

He might want to leave aside the question of whether it can properly be said that he gave ‘incorrect information’ merely by failing to ‘expect’ something that then happened, as I’d imagine he is probably better off failing the gateway if at all possible.

It’s just the sheer mess that bothers me, the sheer stupid mess made of the ‘simplest’ claims!

I’m inputting this to stakeholders just for the fun of it…

Claimant’s job ended and, in May of this year, she tried to claim JSA by phone, was advised could claim UC which would be financially no different and did so. She was substantially worse off and in part due to the £338 condition mentioned above. Complaint lodged with requests for compensation for amounts lost and distress caused. Initial response from DWP Special Payments says it is the claimant’s responsibility to research and claim any benefits appropriate to their circumstances and that: “The Universal Credit Portal gives claimants option to claim JSA via telephone call.”

The list on top right hand side of the UC initial page says

“Benefits entitlement

Universal Credit
Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) 
Benefits calculators
Benefit cap
Benefit fraud
Sign in to your Universal Credit account
More in Benefits entitlement  

Elsewhere on GOV.UK

Find a job with Universal Jobmatch “

If you select the JSA option you are indeed advised on entitlement to and how to claim it.
Does anyone know whether this part of the UC portal existed to give claimants the option to claim JSA back in May of this year? Was there a point when the DWP admitted there was a problem for someone in a UC (Gateway) area trying to claim CBJSA? And does having “Jobseekers Allowance” included in a list of benefit-related subjects really constitute giving claimants the option to claim JSA?

Hi Campbell

I think there’s clear evidence here - http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/9810/ - from May this year showing how difficult it was to claim contributory JSA so you could maybe use that as evidence to support your case?

Campbell, could you link the page you are referring to? If sounds like it’s this one:
https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit/overview

However, I suspect DWP might be talking about some other page in the UC claiming process??

If the page is the one linked above, then for the record it did have all the same links back in May, e.g., see snapshot from April. But it’s a pretty weak argument for DWP to say that a claimant should disbelieve specific advice given to them by phone, just because there is a link from a UC page to a JSA page. There is no accompanying text suggesting that they can be both be claimed. DWP may as well give a link on every page to an A-Z of every other benefit, and say the onus is then entirely on claimants, no matter what wrong advice they might have had by phone. Indeed, if you click “more” on that list of benefits, you get further links to pages on Income Support, and so on. How is a claimant meant to know which is relevant? How are they meant to know that the advice they were given by phone was wrong?

Someone researching this question from scratch might reasonably end up on the following page, which supposedly gives guidance on ‘Universal Credit and other benefits’:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-other-benefits-quick-guide/extra-support-for-universal-credit-claimants

There’s no mention of JSA there (as it only lists what you may be passported to from UC). So by DWP’s reasoning, isn’t that misleading claimants into thinking that they can’t get c-JSA if on UC? (This page giving specific info about new-style JSA was only created by DWP yesterday.)

For what it’s worth, we were told in August by DWP’s External Relations and UC Lead for our area:
“We are aware however, that signposting and advice regarding claiming contributory benefits alongside Universal Credit could be enhanced and we are currently looking at the best way to achieve this and improve the customer journey.”

Many thanks to both of you; you’ve helped to enhance my journey no end.  What I would like to do is to be able to refer to specific documents/statements by the DWP, etc. I could use the context of the experiences that the threads demonstrate, but I don’t think it will get us what we want if I rely solely on our complaints - we would say that sort of thing, wouldn’t we?

Daphne,
Do I remember some reference to your being involved in discussions with DWP about this issue? If so, are you able to give me any specifics about these? e.g. dates, what part of the DWP was involved, what organisation you represented (LASA?) and any indication about what was said and agreed?

Jon,
This is the link to what I understood to be the “Universal Credit Portal” as referred to in the DWP’s response to my complaint.

https://www.gov.uk/apply-universal-credit

Looks fairly similar to the one you sent to me.

Would you be able to give me the specifics of the above DWP statement that would enable me to refer to it? e.g. dates, organisation it was sent to, etc?

I just think that the more inescapable and precise evidence we can provide, the greater the prospect of successfully arguing for compensation when our clients are worse off through being wrongly directed to claim UC. And if it works for one…

I know… dream on! We can but try (very hard!).

All the best

Campbell

Hi Campbell, I’ve sent you a message with a document attached, which was sent to various CABs, welfare rights groups, etc (go to ‘my rightsnet’ at the top, and then ‘inbox’ on the left). Let me know if you don’t get it.

That list of links down the right hand side of the gov.uk page seems to be generic, it’s a stretch to argue that it represents anything like specific info on somebody’s entitlement.

Hi Campbell

It has been a long-running issue within stakeholders meetings. We kept raising it to no avail and eventually Neil Hodgson - our UC contact at stakeholders - arranged a conference call on 3 February 2016 between me, Neil and two DWP strategy people - Dave Pryce and Clare Watermann (I represent rightsnet and NAWRA). Basically at that meeting they acknowledged that it was very difficult for claimants to claim contJSA in a UC area as they could not make an online claim for JSA due to failing the gateway questions at the start. They were sent to UC and there was nothing in the UC claim process that pointed them back to contJSA. I asked if something could be put in and they said any changes had to go through various levels of bureaucracy and nothing was going to happen soon. I asked if work coaches could raise it at initial interviews but their response was that they were not benefits advisers and couldn’t do that. In short they acknowledged it was a problem and they were looking into it but nothing was going to change in the short-term.

It was also raised with them that training was needed for staff on the JSA phone claim line as, even if someone did get that far, the claimline staff were also very reluctant to take a claim telling people they should be claiming UC.

I’m going to forward you a couple of emails from around then too.

Hope that’s of some help.

Daphne

I am foolishly optimistic that it will make a great deal of difference.

Thank you to both for your excellent support so far. I look forward to receiving your emails Daphne and can I refer to the details you have given?; If you want to use my work email address, it is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

I was able to access the minutes Jon and I think they contribute to reducing wriggle room.

I’ll be certain to get back to you if this results in an ex gratia payment, although it may take some time to return from over the moon.

All the best

Campbell

Daphne, are you able to send the forwarded emails?

All the best
Campbell

Sorry Campbell - I haven’t been in the last couple of days so only just seen this -I did send the emails last Tuesday but to the address we have on the system for you which may be an old one? An admin one for berwick CAB? I will resend them now to the address you’ve given me - do you want me to update our system too?

And yes it’s fine to refer to any of the information I’ve given.

Daphne,

Gratefully received your emails to my new address. Yes, please update my contact details. A big thanks to you, Jon and those who contributed to the linked threads, whose information I referred to by way of general background evidence of the extent, duration and seeming intractability of the problem. The 2nd complaint has now gone off. Will keep you informed of (hopefully) progress. Interesting they now have (since 6/12/16) a page on the UC website about claiming “new style” JSA.

Have a good Xmas & 2017.

Campbell