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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Covid-19 issues  →  Thread

Suspension of sanctions

Carolyn McA
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Adviser, Citizens Advice and Rights Fife

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We have been informed via our local authority Welfare Reform team that DWP has said that anyone whose UC is currently sanctioned should request the sanction be lifted via a message in their journal (and presumably, that it then will be lifted). Can anyone confirm that this is the case? I’ve been tasked with confirming the information before we spread it more widely…

Wensleyfoss
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I would be interested if this is the case.

Dan Manville
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Greater Manchester Law Centre

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I’ve just emailed our partnership manager to check

Carolyn McA
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I’ve now managed to contact our partnership manager, who forwarded me this message which he sent to the Head of Revenues and Commerce at the local authority:

“Further to your query regarding existing sanctions, please see the latest update below:

A new process will be introduced as soon as possible to allow for the closure of all open ended sanctions incurred in Universal Credit, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment Support Allowance or Income Support.

Until that time, if a claimant with an open ended sanction in place makes contact with DWP for any reason [‘any reason’ in bold in original], that contact can be treated as the claimant meeting the compliance condition and the sanction can be ended”

 

Carolyn McA
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I’m concerned about the message above specifying ‘open ended’, which seems to imply that fixed term sanctions won’t be lifted, yet the message subject line is ‘Ongoing sanctions’, so any further detail/clarification anyone can add would still be appreciated.

Dan Manville
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Carolyn McA - 31 March 2020 11:52 AM

I’m concerned about the message above specifying ‘open ended’, which seems to imply that fixed term sanctions won’t be lifted, yet the message subject line is ‘Ongoing sanctions’, so any further detail/clarification anyone can add would still be appreciated.

A sanction is open ended until a person complies with whatever they’ve been sanctioned for not doing.

Clearly they don’t have to do it anymore and benefit can just be reinstated but it’s on the claimant to contact and get it sorted.

Daphne
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Only lower and lowest sanctions are open-ended, higher and medium are fixed-term - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/part/8/chapter/2/crossheading/reduction-periods - it is a bit unclear

Carolyn McA
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It’s now been clarified by our partnership manager that what DWP have actually said is that anyone currently in the open-ended part of a lowest or low level sanction for any sanctionable benefit will have any contact with DWP, for any reason, treated as compliance with the requirement, thus ending the open-ended part of the sanction. For UC claimants a journal message would count as contact. The fixed period part of lowest and low level sanctions and medium and high level sanctions (which don’t have an open-ended component) are not affected.

I suppose this is better than nothing, but not nearly as good as claimed by the message we originally received, which was:
‘Please see information regarding welfare sanctions;
“For anyone who you know that currently has a sanction tell them to go on to their journal and say ‘they wish their sanction to be lifted’ – this has come from DWP via [local authority officers who had forwarded the message from the DWP quoted in my 11:45am post] “

 

 

Daphne
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Some FAQs on the claimant commitment during COVID-19 outbreak from PLP -

https://claimantcommitments.org.uk/covid-19/