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jobcentre ban notices
people coming across this?
‘... last week, I visited a few people ... who told me they and people they knew had been banned from their jobcentre for complaining about the centre and their workfare provider.
The jobcentre ban notices (which are not signed by a named officer) said they were banned for verbal and written abuse and behaviour “which was totally unacceptable” (no further details on that appear in the correspondence). The people in question denied the charges in the letters. More to the point ... they felt that they had little recourse. They said that they had nowhere to go to appeal those bans. They’d been issued with ban notices by London lawyers (I have copies of these) and then the jobcentre (I have those as well) and told to appear at another job centre for their fortnightly JSA interviews. That was the end of that.’
http://www.katebelgrave.com/2013/09/jobcentre-anger-and-bans-what-a-mess/
One of the problems with this is the splitting off of jobcentres from benefit administration. Back in the old days if a claimant had a problem he could go to his local jobcentre and see a person on the front counter. That person could then go into the back office and talk to a decision maker who could then give that person more detailed information to pass on to the claimant in order to help him understand what was going on and what, if anything, he could do about it. Now, claimants visiting jobcentres are told that it’s nothing to do with us, go away and phone the contact centres. Often claimants have already done this and either been fobbed off or told to contact the jobcentre. This is chaos and no wonder people are angry.
One of the problems with this is the splitting off of jobcentres from benefit administration. Back in the old days if a claimant had a problem he could go to his local jobcentre and see a person on the front counter. That person could then go into the back office and talk to a decision maker who could then give that person more detailed information to pass on to the claimant in order to help him understand what was going on and what, if anything, he could do about it. Now, claimants visiting jobcentres are told that it’s nothing to do with us, go away and phone the contact centres. Often claimants have already done this and either been fobbed off or told to contact the jobcentre. This is chaos and no wonder people are angry.
A few years ago I worked for JCP. The reason the staff couldn’t give an answer to claimants was also partly down to the horrific case notes of the staff at the benefit centres. They abbreviated every word in an entire sentence.
eg.
“Client has sent in GL24 Form and will hold a reconsideration in five days”.
Benefit centre will write “Clt hs st G4 Fm ad wl hod recn n fe dys”
Nt mch gd to te clt or te advr
I cme aX this 2
On a related line to this thread, I went to a JCP “representatives” meeting last Friday, where we were told that a local initiative to put someone from the benefit centre into two local jobcentres, so that claimants could go in and see someone to answer queries about their benefit claims, had been a great success.
So there you go, how suprising is that? People like to talk face to face with someone who can actually look at their records and give them some information about it - who would have thought of that?
One of mine got one of these; he had, mind, threatened to burn the place down.
No matter as the client was taking a discrimination suit a la MM & DM out against DWP and the very same day the litigation div received the letter of claim & they paid him. In their haste they paid him rather too much as well.
Funny that…