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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

The (Dis) Orientation Express - transfer to full service

Andrew Dutton
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Welfare rights service - Derbyshire County Council

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Total Posts: 1955

Joined: 12 October 2012

As a service, we are very worried about the full service guidance, not least on transfers from live to full service.

http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2016-0778/Transfers_from_Live_Service_to_Full_Service_v3.0.pdf

Although DWP do not call it a new claim ,the poor claimant is going to have to go through a process which is, er, a new claim, and people can have benefit suspended if they do not jump through all the hoops!

They will be compelled to:
• receive an ‘orientation letter’  and then an ‘action letter’ telling them what to do
• register on gov.uk for full service (‘similar to making a new claim although it is not a new claim’)
• attend an evidence interview and produce ‘all necessary documentation’

If not, their claim will be suspended and then closed (no time range given) and a new claim will have to be made.

I also understand that claimants may have to use a brand-new six-digit reference number (not the NINO) to manage their claim under full service, although this is not confirmed.

This process seems guaranteed to shed claimants left right and centre as they fail to understand or to comply with these requirements within time.

It also seems to have no purpose other than as a trap for vulnerable claimants– claims could be transferred to full service without all this palaver, and with claimants being offered proper support by DWP to explain the transfer and how to manage an online claim.

SarahJBatty
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Money Adviser, Thirteen, Middlesbrough

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Joined: 12 July 2012

This looks like a luxuriously helpful service compared to the help offered to new claimants on Full Service.

We went live in full service in Hartlepool in December 16.  3 months later, almost half of all ‘unemployed and required to seek work’ (according to this week’s ONS stats) in Hartlepool are on UC rather than JSA. 

Apparently, there has been a higher number of people with health problems than other full service roll out areas.  I suspect that this is because of the numbers being kicked off ESA in a town with high deprivation and claimant numbers.  Anecdotally quite a few people I have spoken come within that claimant group.  As we know, many of those people would have a strong case at appeal, and are therefore ‘vulnerable’.

When making a new claim for Full service it is very patchy whether you are offered help to claim or simply directed to a computer.  See my other post on this issue.