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Lost medical certificates
Ongoing problems with lost med certs in the black hole of Wolverhampton.. It costs our clients almost £5 to get to JCP with replacement so we met with JC Work Coach recently to ask if we could fax/send electronically direct to Job Centre so they could send to processing. He said he would check with those above to see if this was possible.
Our request was refused on the basis that “original certificates need to be inspected by DWP staff to ensure they have not been tampered with or amended, before they are scanned” He went on to say that he had been asked to conduct some research in this area to see if any other CABs are having problems with med certs and to see if they had any solutions put in place.
Thought if any of you had feedback/comments/solutions I could send directly to save him the work. Polite comments only please…
Ongoing problems with lost med certs in the black hole of Wolverhampton.. It costs our clients almost £5 to get to JCP with replacement so we met with JC Work Coach recently to ask if we could fax/send electronically direct to Job Centre so they could send to processing. He said he would check with those above to see if this was possible.
Our request was refused on the basis that “original certificates need to be inspected by DWP staff to ensure they have not been tampered with or amended, before they are scanned” He went on to say that he had been asked to conduct some research in this area to see if any other CABs are having problems with med certs and to see if they had any solutions put in place.
Thought if any of you had feedback/comments/solutions I could send directly to save him the work. Polite comments only please…
the sick lines are probably under a pile of my is10 forms that have went missing.
It’s not much help but I do wonder about insisting upon emailing them to JCP anyway. That at least offers the opportunity to
- show the claimant has received the medical certificate.
- make a specific declaration as to the fact that the certificate has been sent to Wolverhampton and detail the correct address.
- subsequently highlight that the problem is absolutely at the Wolverhampton end.
We seem to go through spates of it. The time it regularly seems to happen is where ESA has terminated due to WCA failure and client subsequently goes through MR/appeals. Because claim has been terminated the med certs presumably don’t get linked to the terminated claim (even if they successfully pass through the Wolverhampton portals) and no one at the DWP wants to take ownership of it. The fact that ESA processing/administration is passed around the different BCs depending on workload doesn’t exactly help.
Other than complaining I’v not found a tactic that works (you find the odd person prepared to accept faxed copies but they’re few and far between).
Glad to see that we all know how DWP will be dealing with this exact issue in the paperless digital world of Universal Credit isn’t it?
Oh wait…..
Other than complaining I’v not found a tactic that works (you find the odd person prepared to accept faxed copies but they’re few and far between).
Ring JCP and make an appointment and they will accept them over the counter. I was once a frequent flyer at our local JCP handing in med3s.
Hi Dan,
Thanks- we do that where we can but the problem is that (a) having lost our most helpful contact at the local JC it isn’t easy to arrange appointments on behalf of our clients and (b) a fair proportion of them really struggle with going to the JC (either due to physical or mental health). It’s blinking irritating when we have copies of the relevant med certs on the clients files.
Also extremely irritating is that one of our local GPs has started charging £20 to provide duplicate fit notes where the original has been lost. Really helpful (not) when it is lost in the DWP system somewhere and client has no money because ESA is not paid..
One of our local GPs did it slightly differently. He wrote to the DWP informing them that he was fed up with writing duplicate Med 3s when JC+ had lost the original, and that if they required a duplicate he would charge DWP for it.
We only found out about the letter because a copy of it was included in a client’s medical record that he had obtained to use in evidence at a tribunal.
One of our local GPs did it slightly differently. He wrote to the DWP informing them that he was fed up with writing duplicate Med 3s when JC+ had lost the original, and that if they required a duplicate he would charge DWP for it.
We only found out about the letter because a copy of it was included in a client’s medical record that he had obtained to use in evidence at a tribunal.
good man that GP