Non digital claims and online account

Again, apologies if this is a daft question; still waiting with bated breath for full service to arrive here.

If a claim is made by phone or via a Visiting Officer, does the claimant then have an online account? If so and the reason the claim was made like that is because they are and always will be unable to use an online account, what are they supposed to do with it?

HI Rosie

My understanding via stakeholders is that a phone claim should only be made if a digital claim can’t be made with support. If this is the case the UC helpline person makes what they call a proxy claim using a contingency email (temporary one) to set up the account. This means the person can’t receive emails and I think then uses the phone if they need to deal with anything on the account and I guess should be able to request communications by letter (but I haven’t heard of this in practice yet)

If the person will be able to manage the online claim with support then they are very much encouraged to have an online claim and a visiting officer will just help them do that. But there is no support from a visiting officer to maintain the claim so it depends on the claimant getting support themselves or possibly asking for a reasonable adjustment of communications by letter.

This is all pretty theoretical though - others might have more direct experience of what is actually happening

Thanks Daphne, that’s really helpful