I've been on holiday, have I missed something?

The Pensions Service have just told me that they no longer act on written consent foms, and must contact my client directly before confirming whether they're actioning client's SDP.

Is this simply rubbish?

In a word, yes.

We're having a lot of difficulty speaking to the PS at the moment - they're asking for all sorts of info as confirmation that we're acting for clients - eg phone numbers, even bank details were requested on one occasion. We don't divulge the first and we don't record the second.

Sadly the DCS, who used to be very efficient and easy to deal with on the telephone, seem to be heading the same way. I was told by a worker there yesterday that they were "tightening up" on procedures and that they wouldn't spaak to me unless I gave them client's phone number.

Sue

If you look on "TOOLKIT" - under DWP guidance, you'll find their eleven page guidance on working with Customer's Representatives, which has been in circulation for at least 12 months .....whenever we run across an over enthusiastic person, we usually deflate them a little by reading parts of it out loud .........

We might add that Pension Service have difficulty in retaining call centre staff - as soon as they're trained they tend to get poached by commercial call centres ....who pay better money.

I've got the complaint form to fill in in the next day or two, I was planning to append a copy of the DWP guide to dealing with us to it. That'll teach 'em.

Funnily enough we've just had similar scenario with a community care grant internal review application (Bristol depot). Our consent form is based on the sample one (intended for welfs to utilise) in the appendix of the DWP guide for their own workers when dealing with clients reps (Mike mentions).

But the review section's demand is that the submission/letter we sent with the above authorisation wotsit has to be signed by client for it to be a valid review application.

Kafakesque or what!

I was speaking to someone at TC intermediary helpline about this last week. It would appear that the agencies/gov't departments have got the heebygeebies about divulging information to third parties because the gov't have become so good at inadvertantly passing data to all and sundry and now need to check that the person they're speaking to hasn't got the info from a CD rom they found in the back of a taxi (not that any of us can afford to use taxis).

Well I complained about the Pensions Service the letter accompanied by the working with reps booklet referred to above. I'll post with the reply.