Hello all,

this is just a general question to see if any of you in other parts of the country are having the same probs as we are on the south coast with our local BDC?......

ie.

1. We can never get through, the number is constantly engaged

2. On the rare occasion you do get through, the staff have no idea what they are talking about. You always end up asking for a supervisor and strangely there is never one available.

3. You cannot speak to the I.S/IB sections and are told someone will call you back and they never do

4. They seem to be losing post by the sackfull so clients are going for months with no money, and we can't get through to speak to anyone to chase it up.

5. They never reply to letters

Myself and two colleagues who work for other charities in Brighton have sent a complaint letter to the manager to no avail.

It seems to me the govt are going to hit their target of reducing the no. of people on IB by just making it impossible for anyone to make a claim!

Putting it politely, may I suggest that you escalate your complaints up through the relavant Managers listed below - you'll notice that most of them have email addresses which makes life easier - do you not have regular Liaison meetings with JCP at which you can express your concerns....

Anyway, I have always found that External Relations Managers tend to be more helpful than most......

If there is a history of mail going adrift, more so than usual, let us know and we can bring it up with those nice JCP gentlemen in the metropolis when we go up there again......



SOUTH EAST
Customer Service Director Paul Williams
Ranger House
Walnut Tree Close
Guilford
GU1 4US

Regional External Relations Manager Allan McColgan
Ranger House
Walnut Tree Close
Guilford
GU1 4US

Berkshire Buckinghamshire & Oxford District Manager Laura Asquith
Sunley House
Oxford Road
Aylesbury
HP19 8EZ
TEL 01296314772
Laura.asquith@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk

External Relationships Manager Andy Du Gay
Berks Bucks Oxon. District
Reading Jobcentre Plus
Adelphi House, Friar Street, Reading RG1 1HD
Tel : 0118 980 8371
Andy.du-Gay@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk


Hampshire & the Isle of Wight District Manager Martin Pryor
District Manager
Jobcentre Plus
Hampshire & Isle of Wight District Office
2nd Floor, Wynnstay House,
121 High street,
Cosham,
PO6 3DR
Tel: 023 9230 4891
martin.pryor@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk

External Relations Manager Lyn Browne
Jobcentre Plus,
Wynnstay House,
121 High Street,
Cosham,
Portsmouth
PO6 3DR
Tel: 023 9230 4883
lyn.browne@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk

Surrey & Sussex District Manager Lynn Conolly
Ranger House
Walnut Tree Close
Guildford
Surrey
GU1 4UL
TEL 01483 446152
Lynn.conolly@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk

External Relations Manager Lynda Jones
Phoenix Buildings
32 West Street
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 2RZ
TEL 01273 366108
Lynda.jones4@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk

Kent District Manager Lynda Russell
Maidstone JCP
County Gate One
Staceys Street
Maidstone
Kent
ME14 1ST
TEL 01622702731
Lynda.Russell@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk

External Relations Manager Philip Sturt
Maidstone Jobcentre Plus,
County Gate, Stacey's Street,
Maidstone,
Kent, ME14 1ST.
TEL 01622 702733
philip.sturt@jobcentreplus.gsi.gov.uk.

Thanks for list. We are supposed to have regular meetings with JCP but they only happen every 3/4 months and when they do, the managers from Brighton & Hove will not take any resposibility as our BDC is in Worthing.And the Worthing manager won't come to the meetings because we work in Brighton & Hove. Believe me I have tried this route!

Our BDC is Canterbury and the service is diabolical! They don't call us back, it is sometimes difficult to get through (no longer impossible), they usually don't reply to letters - including complaints, they do not record our client's authorities - and the standard of decision making is sometimes very low, etc, etc.

We do not have regular liaison meetings.

The managers consistently refuse to acknowledge the state of the problem.

I have recently written to the regional manager.

One of the biggest problems is that the call centre staff have very little or no apparent knowledge in either dealing with the benefits or dealing with the public. It is all but impossible to speak to DM's these days.

I have pointed out to the DWP that this method of administering claims is totally inconsistent with the ideaology behind the DMA reforms, but they didn't reply.

There are other serious issues with other 'local' benefits such as social fund (at Milton Keynes it takes 2 months for a CCG decision and then 2 months for a review!).

If we factor in the the unlawful collection of debts from a series of debt centres suffering from identity crises, then we have a recipe for a very large, PUBLICLY FUNDED (whether LH eligible or not), caseload...

I left casework in 2002. When I came back to it in 2004, the local JC+ benefits/services, in my opinion, were at - or very soon to become - at a worse state than when I started WR in 1996.

That's all I have to say about that.

Sounds like they are all being run down to a cost base that will suit the private sector when (no doubt) it all goes out to commercial tender.

And no doubt the victims on the receiving end (the public) will only have recourse to legal advice from ...you guessed it - the very same multi-national companies holding the contracts. I'd love to be proved wrong...

Our BDC is Carlisle. No complaints so far.

The phone's are always answered quickly and the person on the end can invariably answer our questions, if they cannot our details are taken and we're told someone from the section will phone us back within 3 hours.

In my experience they've always rung us back within half an hour so far.

We've not had many issues with the time taken to process claims and, when there has been it's usually because our client has not provided information that's been requested.

The biggest problem we have for clients is the fact that you cannot get through to social fund AT ALL! We've started to send clients to our local MP's office who seem to be able to magically get through to someone.

Well, I finally got a response to my complaint and had to share with you a classic line. One of our big complaints was that they keep losing forms/med.certs/letters (anything we send to them really) to which the response was 'It may be that the movement of work is giving us some problems in identifying where it is, so it is probably not lost......'

So that's ok then, they're not actually losing anything, they just don't know where it is!

..........on a round-about in Exeter perchance ..........?

perhaps they are using the hidden space that comes with filing cabinets........................

That between the cabinet and wall!!

........there are stories coming out of BDC's of not insignificant amounts of "unattached" mail looking to be matched up with cases - and don't forget that mail is opened in a privatised post room setting before being sent to the relavent sections.........

... or not sent as the case may be!.....

It should be noted that the records sitting on the roundabout off the A30 near Exeter were only classed as "temporarily" out their possession (of the well known carrier). Can only be properly lost if there is no one (or their dog) to discover them.

I've got a case on my desk, with the appeal papers in front of me, that I am about to work on. Client kicked off Incap for failing to attend medical without showing good cause.

She was in hospital and DWP have said that she has not provided evidence of this. client says she sent sick note to local BDC. I have photocopies of the sick note and of the recorded delivery sticker. Have also been on Royal Mail website and printed off proof of delivery.

About to write to BDC. If only all my cases were as easy as this and all BDC cock ups as easy to rectify. But if this goes all the way to a hearing I'll be bloody fuming.

Having said that I've had a couple of problems with Administrative Officers' incompetence lately but when I've taken things higher then senior officers have been very helful and efficient.

I was told recently by somone working in DWP Debt Management that after the mail is opened in the postroom it is scanned into their computer. This is supposed to be because that makes the information accessible to any DWP employee, and to avoid the need to courier mail around the country.

Talking of Exeter, our experience of Exeter BDC sounds similar to the Carlisle BDC.

being curious about scanners and DWP, I checked with JCP in Sheffield - got this reply:-

"Some in-coming post is scanned at the Darlington centre before it is distributed in hard copy to the relevant debt centre, but the vast majority is received and kept as hard copy.

No JCP computer systems have access to debt management systems, so there is no ability for JCP to read the scanned images".

The more revealing part of that reply relates to the fact that in 2008, the JCP computer system cannot access the Debt management computer.

Hi
I work in a FE college in Lancashire and we have had no end of problems with the Marton Mere Call centre. We have done a lot of work with both central DWP and the local JCP but we still keep having problems. One of the frustrations we have is these jobs have a high turnover of staff so you constantly have to revisit the problem areas.

We have had problems with the phone line and also the 0800 freephone new claims line - although not benefits trained and JCP assure us this is an admin only call ahead of the benefits adviser pursuing a new claim they seem to take it upon themselves to give out ad-hoc advice. The classic one for us is the claimant mentions education and without checking out any other facts the helpline staff tell them they will not qualify for anything and refuse to take further details - its absolute tosh! To get around this problem we are printing off IS forms off the website and sending in paperclaims with a backdate request - they actually are processed much more speedily than the phone claims. I had to laugh when our local newspaper ran an article stating that IB claims were down and so were JSA claims - as you state thats because no one can actually get to the stage where they can make a claim! I think to really tackle this it has to be done at policy level - I was at a dwp conference and they were lets say a little hostile to external agency concerns - stating they knew what the problems were and needed to go away and see how they could be resolved - however things don't appear to be improving!
Regards Caroline

Re mail being opened and sorted at a Royal Mail depot....Our local BDC have given us a list of the sections by which mail is sorted, i.e. the labels on the pigeon holes. We now incorporate this in the address of the letter, or write and highlight it on other documents, which at least reduces the risk of sorting errors.

This is the text of an email we sent to our JC+ district communications manager today:


Thank you for the invitation to the Stakeholders conference. Unfortunately we’ll be able unable to attend. This is due in part to current casework/appeals commitments, but also due to the fact that we are disillusioned with our experience of jobcentre plus. We do not feel that the stakeholder conference will give us the opportunity to properly raise our client’s concerns. We also feel that those concerns we do raise are not dealt with the proper degree of consideration.

For example, you might remember that we raised several serious concerns at the last stakeholder meeting at Adelphi House. All of those concerns remain. In addition, we have several outstanding cases where complaints on behalf of our clients have gone unanswered.

On balance, we do not feel that the stakeholder conference represents either a serious attempt by Jobcentre plus to seek meaningful involvement with the aim of positive change, or that our attending would represent the best and most cost-effective use of our time.

Yours sincerely.

Translation:

We reject your attempt to get us to collude with you in your charade of a public relations exercise, the sole aim of which is to cover up your shambolic shortcomings. Besides, we have far more important things to do.

Love and Peace
etc, etc.

Precisely!

If everyone were to do this 'en masse', do you think we would see a positive result?

thanks to the dwp, we've uploaded an up-to-date list of complaints contacts in the job centre plus south east region -

Jobcentre Plus SE region complaint contacts Sept 08