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Change of Address
I know this has been discussed before and that someone who changes address within the same LA did not warrant a claim to UC. However, we went live this week and our local Jobcentre is insisting that a change of address even within area means that a new claim to UC has to be made if the housing costs change. This is the response I got from them.
Hi Elaine,
If a customer changes address, and their housing cost changes, they will move onto UC. This is the case if the customer moves within their local area or not.
This has been checked with OED and case managers who were on site for our Go Live day
is this right?
No, this is confused rubbish. It vaguely resembles a back-to-front account of what happens to people getting UC in temporary accommodation immediately before 11/4/18: they migrate to HB if the charges change or they move to other temporary accommodation.
Other than that, the golden rule is:
- in full service more or less anyone who wants to may (if they wish) make a new claim for UC
- in full service it is not normally possible to make a new claim for any other working age means tested benefit
Soi f you find yourself in a position where you would like to make a new claim for something, that something normally has to be UC. Changing address within the same LA does not put you in a position where you need to make a new claim so you just don’t. DWP would be acting unlawfully if they proactively shut down a legacy DWP benefit award without there being any change in the claimant satisfying the conditions for that benefit. In the case of people getting the Severe Disability Premium it is gross maladministration.
So whoever “OED” is and whoever the case managers are, they are wrong about this. Increasingly looks as if you have to escalate quite a long way before you find anyone at DWP who understands the law relating to UC migration.
Thank you Peter for confirming my suspicions. I can see this is going to be a bit of a nightmare trying to get them to agree they are wrong! I’m not sure who OED is either! I will make sure our LA is not giving out the wrong information too as I know they work closely with the Partnership Manager too.
“So whoever “OED” is and whoever the case managers are, they are wrong about this. Increasingly looks as if you have to escalate quite a long way before you find anyone at DWP who understands the law relating to UC migration.”
Seems to be the case with every aspect of UC. The default approach seems to be “make it up as we go along and hope nobody challenges.” I have found that asking “what regulation is that covered by?” frequently elicits either feeble excuses or total incomprehension at the other end.
Not good enough!
Hi
I have just had the following response from the local Jobcentre Work Coach Team Leader who I was in discussion with
Sorry I think there was some confusion here!
Our Service Innovation Leads have looked into the relevant national guidance. Please find the below which is taken from our guidance pages:
What happens if a Housing Benefit claimant reports a change of address into a UCFS area?
If the claimant’s change of address moves them into a new local authority (LA) area, they will need to make a new claim for UCFS and claim for housing costs within the claim. In UCFS, HB is no longer available to working age people (apart from those in “Specified Accommodation”), so the person would naturally migrate to UC.
However, if the claimant has more than 2 children they will continue on their legacy claim even if they have moved to a different local authority area.
If the person moves address within the same LA area and has an existing HB claim, this will only be a change of circs for HB purposes, and no natural migration will occur.
Hope this clears this up, I am also going to forward this on to the case managers in the service centre, who have a caseload of customer, just so everyone is aware. Our housing guidance is so huge, we are going to be looking at appointing special housing leads, for all these enquiries to go through!
That’s really positive - acknowledging that they are learning the ropes and getting things sorted when they discover a mistake
“We’re going to take over Housing Benefit as part of our new, national, all singing, all dancing Universal Credit roll-out”...............
“Ooops! We don’t know what we’re doing. It’s all sooo much more complicated than we thought!”
“I know. Lets bring in some Housing Cost “leads”. We could recruit them from the experienced HB staff we’ve just made redundant!”
Couldn’t make it up!
“I know. Lets bring in some Housing Cost “leads”. We could recruit them from the experienced HB staff we’ve just made redundant!”
Have DWP not previously flatly refused to take on former HB staff or am I imagining this?
If they have, it’s backfiring on them now.
That’s really positive - acknowledging that they are learning the ropes and getting things sorted when they discover a mistake
yes .... but ....what happened to ‘test and learn’? One might have hoped 2yrs into FSUC that they could get something as basic as this right as part of staff training before UC is launch in a new area. Doesn’t say much for DWP training or briefing materials for partnership teams etc.
I don’t believe “training” actually exists beyond a cursory overview, and heavy emphasis on pushing as many people onto UC as possible, using whatever spurious reasons can be dreamed up at the time.
The lack of knowledge at both contact centre and jobcentre levels is truly shocking.
So whoever “OED” is and whoever the case managers are, they are wrong about this. Increasingly looks as if you have to escalate quite a long way before you find anyone at DWP who understands the law relating to UC migration.[/quote]
I think you may find that it is the Operational Excellence Directorate which is funny! We should suggest they look up ‘Excellence’ in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
I think you may find that it is the Operational Excellence Directorate which is funny! We should suggest they look up ‘Excellence’ in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
Snare drum roll, hi-hat, “I’m here all week”
Actually Brighton 5th June, John O’Groats 6th, Plymouth 7th, Stornaway 8th .....tough tour.