Hello all

Hopefully a easy question to answer.

Is failing to contact an employer about a vacancy which the jobcentre have given you to apply for, covered under the jobseeker agreement or is it other legislation.

My client failed to call an employer to enquire about a vacancy which the jobcentre had given him. He had a family emergency (not medical) and had never failed to call an employer before. Client got sanctioned under good cause, which we are going to try to argue that he did have good cause for not calling. Client has been sanction for three months (reduced from six months), however I note that failing to comply with jobseeker agreemant is maximum sanction of four weeks. Can I assume then that failure to contact an employer is covered under some different regs, perhaps the same regs as failing to take a job.

Many thanks in advance.

Sanctions come under section 19 of the Jobbseekers Act, not the regulations. Failing to apply for a vacancy notified by an employment officer is one of the group of "offences" that may lead to a sanction of up to 26 weeks, while some other "offences" are 2 weeks first time, four weeks subsequently (and ther are others that go on to 26 weeks third time).

There is no such "offence" as failing to comply with the jobseeker's agreement. It is often used as a guideline at signing on to check that the claimant is genuinely available for work and actively seeking employment; but in fact what is in it has no real legal status. Lots of JSAgs "require" the claimant to do about 10 things a week to look for work; but the law only requires them to do more than two, unless in all the circumstances it is not reasonable to do so many (eg, because you contacted every employer in the area last week) - reg 18 of the JSA Regs. PAs tend not to know this and will stop benefits at the drop of a hat if the claimant doesn't do everything in the JSAg. Tribunals are known to knock them down relying on CJSA/1814/2007 which reminds them to look not at what the JSAg says but what the law says..

Enquiring about a vacancy is not the same as applying for it - what exactly were the instructions from JCP? Were they in writing?
Have a look at CPAG p.411 -412 p 421. You may be able to argue that this was failure to carry out a jobseekers direction which carries fixed sanction of 1,2 ot 4 weeks, rather than failing to apply for a job.

Many thanks for everybodies advice. Some really useful info.