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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

sanctions - confused!!

dizzymare
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Welfare benefits adviser - Dudley MBC

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Total Posts: 318

Joined: 18 June 2010

well it seems im always confused these days! I have been asked to provide some advice to a young man who has been sanctioned (no real reason for failing to attend an interview, so nothing to argue) but the sanction seems to be going on for a very long time and im trying to work out how such sanctions are applied. This would be a low level sanction, so as I understand it, until compliance plus a penalty of 7, 14 or 28 days.

I think the failure was in January, and the YP didn’t make contact with the JC until recently (August I believe)I have no idea when the sanction decision was made (and im not really pursuing this) but as an example, if the assessment period was 8 jan - 7 feb and so on, and the failure to attend was 26 Jan, for example, do the days in between the date that claimant was last paid (which im guessing in this example would be early Feb), and the date that he complied count towards the sanction? they have not been paid in march/april/may/june/july? if he made contact in August, why would he then have to wait until November for a payment?

In this case, there was a sanction of 150 days, so if he didn’t get paid march, april, may, june, july - surely that’s the 150 days already spent and all that remains is the one month penalty? or does the period only start to run from when they make contact so the 150 days would only start from the date he complied and it goes forward?

in that case, what happens in between the failure to attend and compliance? do they get any money? im so sorry for being totally dense but my brain cant deal with this :S I tried to speak to JC regarding another case and even the JC manager couldn’t explain what was going on.  I understand there would be a lag between a failure and a decision and in that time, claimant could still be paid, so that would drag it on a bit I guess but August to November seems a long time.  thank you

WillH
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Locum adviser - CPAG in Scotland

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Joined: 17 June 2010

Are you sure it’s a low level sanction? If it’s failure to attend a work-focused interview (for someone who has to do more than only attend WFIs), then yes it would be low. Do you know which conditionality group he is in?

If it is low then it is 7 days for a first ‘failure’, plus until compliance, but often the problem is knowing that you have been deemed to ‘fail’ and therefore there can be quite a time lag until you comply. In order to count the sanction period we have to begin with the date the sanctionable action took place, BUT that is only to get the length of the period - not when it starts. It seems from the above that he might have a similar failure once or twice in the past though as you mention the ‘one month penalty’ - but that 28 days only applies if it is the 3rd low level sanction within a certain period.

I’ve found that often the problem is the sanction decision not being communicated to the client until quite a bit after it was (presumably) made, and it may be worth complaining if that has happened here?

If he ‘complied’ in August (got in touch and made it clear that he would comply with future interviews, including attendance and participation), then the low level sanction should only run for 7/14/28 days more than the period between his failure to attend and the day before he met the compliance condition.

Where I would expect him to have got money is between failure and the sanction decision (because as you say it usually isn’t immediate). The sanction period starts running from the assessment period of the decision. Without knowing when that decision was, it’s hard to say if you could argue he’d already complied by the time the decision was made, but I"m not sure that is the case here.

The length of the sanction (starting from the decision) then relates to the period from the sanctionable failure until compliance, plus 7/14/28 days.

dizzymare
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Welfare benefits adviser - Dudley MBC

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Total Posts: 318

Joined: 18 June 2010

thanks Will - that’s what I was thinking and it could well be that he may have got paid in between the failure and the decision so that could possibly add on a month or two I guess. When I spoke to JC manager on another case, she had problems working out the period of sanction but I just wanted to make sure that they weren’t adding the period of non compliance on to the penalty, and counting this from the date of compliance (so lengthening the sanction in this way) I think im going to ask him to check the dates with JC so I can double check this. He has all work requirements, and it is possible that this is not his first failure. Thanks for your help with my very waffly query