DWP Unexpected Knock On The Door.

[Deleted User]

seems like B&W scaremongering again,even they admit this will affect a "tiny"% of claimants,my question would be where are the staff coming from for these visits?
in theory you are supposed to get an annual visit from the council if you get HB or Council tax benefit,in 16 years i`ve had one

dippy3103

Visits are far less common place than they were 20 years ago. It's a very expensive & time consuming form of customer contact, so in these days of cuts, they are a quick saving.
If a DWP officer turns up on an unannounced visit you don't have to let them in. However, if you don't you will probably have to attend the office.
I do take the point about unannounced visitors though- I hate people just turning up at my house too... I like to have a quick polish and vac be fire visitors so the place looks it's best!

Jemma-T

Viberduo wrote:

... he even had a industrial hedge cutter he used on his back...

Surely there are less extreme hair removal options nowadays?

missapril75

Mojisola wrote: »

Some companies have a system where you give them a password which the person on the doorstep has to know before you let them in....Simple to organise.

Like asking for a Cognac followed by "do you have a light?"

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Viberduo

tomtom256 wrote: »

The point is though that they have ID that they should show or at least can be askked for.

It isn't a criminal investigation visit so no one should be accused of lying, but then if it is a good day, this would be on there claim forms, no, so this "good day" could then be explained as such and wouldn't be a problem. Unless of course I am missing the point or the person hasn;t been truthful in the first place.

It seems people always put barriers up about home visits, yet the majority of people I interview always say to me during the interview, why didn't/don't you just come round and check, I have nothing to hide.

Seems people do actually want the DWP/LA's to do that.

What is your suggestion for these types of spot checks?

Surely they need to be done as sometimes these vists can help the claimant get more benefits than they are claiming as it's not always about catching people out. Sometimes the DWP is there to help people!

And other times its there to catch people out, I know from personal experience when I went for a weekly New Deal advisor interview 10 years ago I had my words twisted as I did not expect to be put on the spot and also as I had no time to prepare I did not realise my comments would be easily twisted to how the DWP saw fit to interpret them, I even remember a few years ago when I was doing a 5 hour a week uni course(but a hour on bus each way to uni) which was a 9am start and finished at 11am and my JC appointment was 2.30 I filled in the forms to have them change my sign on to 9am and weekly, I found out after some investigation that the reason for the time change and change to weekly was that they thought I was working! Somehow me asking to do a 5 hour a week course meant I was working all those hours

The "point" is comments made and persons body language and speech can be interpreted wrongfully by someone, I remember about 6 years ago getting a visit for housing benefit and I told them I was struggling to pay the rent and all the person said was that I had a big tv I must of been lying/exaggerating what I owned was a crt back when they were expensive that I got when I was working and was too heavy to sell, had a PS2 and Xbox and a old computer.

Morglin

woodbine wrote: »

seems like B&W scaremongering again,even they admit this will affect a "tiny"% of claimants,my question would be where are the staff coming from for these visits?
in theory you are supposed to get an annual visit from the council if you get HB or Council tax benefit,in 16 years i`ve had one

No one is going to get many visits, as they haven't got the staff.

Yearly housing benefit reviews were stopped some time back, around most regions, and any visits just tend to be random.

Lin

Lith

I'm surprised 'DWP' have time to do visits.... if they came at my door i would just tell them to 'sling yer hook' and slam the door shut,

I don't want anything to do with them (if i was claiming that is)

Robbie64

The DWP under its various guises have always undertaken unnotified visits. I was a visiting officer back in the 1980s when Supplementary Benefit was the main means tested benefit, before Income Support replaced it, and some of the visits I did then were not notified in advance. Going back before my time random, unnotified visits were even more common with them actually being the norm in the 1960s and 1970s. At one time, up to the late 1960s, benefit wouldn't usually be paid without a home visit being made and the visit was usually done without prior notification. But even in the 1980s we would still take a % of new claims and do an unnotified visit before any payment was made on a claim.

As fewer visits began to be made it became policy to notify as many visits in advance to make sure the person would be in, as a cost cutting exercise. The DWP seem to be moving back to the policy of random, unnotified, visits and the page linked to is simply pointing this out. At least they are being upfront about it - in the 1980s no-one other than claimants who had received an unnotified visit were probably aware that they were even being done.

That said, and based on past experiences of my time as a visiting officer, I can see these unnotified visits being made to two types of claimants - lone parents and the long term sick. The former because the DWP officer will be looking for signs of an undeclared partner and the the latter to check if the condition of the person is consistent with what they have reported. The unemployed will probably be largely left alone because the JobCentre effectively police these types of claims through the Work programme and sanctions.

K0SS

DWP, just want to create jobs pointless jobs for those who work for the DWP.

KxMx

B&W can be really helpful but they so tend to err on the side of scare mongering.

One shock story recently couldn't be different to my more and wholly positive experience, so I contacted them with mine, they declined to reply