Claim suspended for notsupplying evidence requested in letter I've never received

rockingbilly

Housing_Benefit_Officer wrote: »

There are procedures online. Normally after a letter requesting information is sent out. The claim would only be suspended at this stage if it was obvious there was a large discrepancy in financial or household circumstances that would cause an overpayment (i.e. a wage slip that indicates wages are substantially higher than those held previously etc). If not the claim remains in payment. A reminder is sent out after 14 days. If after 28 days there is no reply then the claim is suspended giving the claimant time to respond. If after 28 days there is no response the claim is cancelled.

About 10% of Housing Benefit claimants fail to respond to reviews - mostly because their financial circumstances have substantially changes - at my Local Authority all claimants who fail to return reviews are investigated. Those that we class as vulnerable (elderly, disabled, English not first language etc) we do try and contact by telephone, email or home visit before suspending the claim.

I am so glad that your local authority DOES follow the rules when considering a suspension of a benefit. What you have described comes straight out of the DWP guide for Decision Makers.
However as I have already said, not everybody follows those rules. The guide and rules describe a long winded process and where you mention vulnerable claimants, it is a requirement that prior to any suspension decision be taken the relevant authority must consider how stopping the benefit would affect them.
I went through an instance with the DWP where they simply stopped the benefit after 30 days without them following any of the safeguarding checks. The DWP said that they had no need to do all of that work as the suspension was not a suspension in the terms of the regulations but an 'inhibition' that was carried out by their computer automatically.

So I ask when is a suspension not a suspension? It is when it is an inhibition!

rockingbilly

Just to finish off, I have a current matter that is causing me a lot of worry.
I received the offer to move from DLA to PIP on the 17th December 2016. I had to respond no later than the 10th January 2017 to start the claim process. Replied the same day asking for a PIP1 form via Recorded Delivery The DWP signed for it on the 22nd December 2016. Not having received the form by the 3rd January 2017, a further request for a PIP1 was sent to the DWP on the 3rd January 2017 via Recorded Delivery. It was signed for by the DWP on the 4th January 2017.
Still not heard and no PIP1 I telephoned the DWP on the 9th January 2017 and was 'forced' to make the claim over the telephone as they stated that neither of my letters had been received. At the end of that call I asked that they send me a copy of the PIP1 that they had completed, this was promised.
As of the 14th January 2017 and not having had any post from the DWP I telephoned them whereupon they first of all denied receiving either of my two letters and further denied that I had asked for a copy of the PIP1 that they had completed from the information given over the phone.

So it appears that post goes into a black hole when dealing with the DWP.
If I had not made the first telephone call it would seem that the option to move from DLA to PIP would have been lost and my current DLA award would have been terminated for failure to contact them in the given timeframe.
Had I not sent the two letters by Recorded Delivery past experience tells me that they would simply say that I never sent the letters!!

Yet the DWP are allowed to state that once they post a document it is deemed to have been received!!

Housing_Benefit_Officer

rockingbilly wrote: »

Just to finish off, I have a current matter that is causing me a lot of worry.
I received the offer to move from DLA to PIP on the 17th December 2016. I had to respond no later than the 10th January 2017 to start the claim process. Replied the same day asking for a PIP1 form via Recorded Delivery The DWP signed for it on the 22nd December 2016. Not having received the form by the 3rd January 2017, a further request for a PIP1 was sent to the DWP on the 3rd January 2017 via Recorded Delivery. It was signed for by the DWP on the 4th January 2017.
Still not heard and no PIP1 I telephoned the DWP on the 9th January 2017 and was 'forced' to make the claim over the telephone as they stated that neither of my letters had been received. At the end of that call I asked that they send me a copy of the PIP1 that they had completed, this was promised.
As of the 14th January 2017 and not having had any post from the DWP I telephoned them whereupon they first of all denied receiving either of my two letters and further denied that I had asked for a copy of the PIP1 that they had completed from the information given over the phone.

So it appears that post goes into a black hole when dealing with the DWP.
If I had not made the first telephone call it would seem that the option to move from DLA to PIP would have been lost and my current DLA award would have been terminated for failure to contact them in the given timeframe.
Had I not sent the two letters by Recorded Delivery past experience tells me that they would simply say that I never sent the letters!!

Yet the DWP are allowed to state that once they post a document it is deemed to have been received!!

Most post gets opened and then scanned and indexed and the original returned - we never see the originals as they are posted back and we view a full colour scan. Problems occur when evidence is sent in with no accompanying letter identifying exactly who it belongs to. A sick note in the name of John Smith with no address, national insurance number or date of birth will never be linked to the correct John Smith. A short birth certificate giving the name of a child will never be connected to the parent if there is no accompanying letter identifying exactly who the parent is. At every local authority I have worked at we would have a box of unlinked post with no identifying name address or national insurance number to link them to the correct claims.

rockingbilly

Housing_Benefit_Officer wrote: »

Most post gets opened and then scanned and indexed and the original returned - we never see the originals as they are posted back and we view a full colour scan. Problems occur when evidence is sent in with no accompanying letter identifying exactly who it belongs to. A sick note in the name of John Smith with no address, national insurance number or date of birth will never be linked to the correct John Smith. A short birth certificate giving the name of a child will never be connected to the parent if there is no accompanying letter identifying exactly who the parent is. At every local authority I have worked at we would have a box of unlinked post with no identifying name address or national insurance number to link them to the correct claims.

I can only but agree with you. If people don't help themselves by making it easy for the council/DWP to link a letter etc to the person's file then they only have themselves to blame.
In my case I always put my NI number, date of birth, any reference that is quoted and my full name on every piece of paper sent. Even so I am still told that that as far as the DWP are concerned that I never sent it if they can't find it.

dekaspace

missapril75 wrote: »

That's what I said. It takes time to get through the system. Mail is opened at central offices other than the DWP on behalf of them. Not being able to lay hands on something because it's not filtered through the system yet is different to not having received it.
There you go...not lost just not so easy to locate during a phone call or brief visit to the office, just as I said.

Except by that point they already had about 6 WEEKS to file stuff and never did, and found stuff in minutes when challenged so in 6 weeks they never had copies of things, oh and to let you know it wasn't just posted it was interally FAXED to other departments, and sent multiple times over the 6 week period, I would phone they didn't have it, post AND fax the same things so it would be a few times a week same things were sent.

And the housing benefit one was over more than 12 WEEKS! Wasn't last time either, one time waited 6 months for a benefit decision, if it wasn't for me able to prove to landlord I had handed in the information I would of been on the streets as who waits 6 months?

And on a few occasions they would tell me "I will look for it" then vanish for up to 20 minutes then come back and claim they checked everywhere in the office and since they can't find it I must of never handed it in.

If it took a long time to find for both cases why did it take MINUTES after each high level complaint to find multiple copies of documents and id?

By next day I meant I got a phone call minutes later saying they received a complaint (my dad knew someone high up) saying they checked and found documents but didn't get a chance to look at them yet, the next day they had processed them and done my claim.

If it only took bosses minutes to find EVERY copy of documents despite counter staff claiming they spent a lot of time checking (its more likely they just walked off and chatted to friends) why couldn't the counter staff find them in the previous 12 weeks?

Similar for the DWP claiming no documents were RECIEVED and thus they had not been sent in and to do them again and finding them all of a sudden.

Put it this way my complaint was taken so seriously I was contacted by the head of DWP Scotland personally and given his secretaries direct phone number, I wish I hadn't lost that letter as it was helpful, though a few weeks after my claim was sorted the DWP screwed up due to computer glitch and swallowed up my payment so I had to contact again (short story, giro was stolen and cashed, had to get proof and things like crime reference number etc, after I complained a new giro was issued but the computer flagged it as "double paid" so took the "overpayment" off my next giro)

missapril75

dekaspace wrote: »

....oh and to let you know it wasn't just posted it was interally FAXED to other departments

A problem when you work in an office that receives things by fax is that your fax is not the only fax received.

If you know a fax is on the way, great. Go and get it. The only thing is you might pick it up thinking it's all for you but when you get back to your desk three floors up you then discover that there are some pages that don't appear to fit with yours. Or someone else took yours.

Or it's someone's job to retrieve the faxes and distribute them and that might mean that they have a dozen faxes since they last collected them, of anything up to a dozen pages each so they have to sort out where each one starts and each one stops. And then identify where in the building each one should go and do something to get it there. Back through the internal system? And what if while someone is delivering a dozen faxes to different places on different floors, someone else is looking for a document and they just looked in one pile five minutes before the fax they are looking for lands on that pile.

Now the fax is where it should be but someone already looked where it should be and now they're wasting time looking in other places where it cannot be....are you getting the picture?

I would phone they didn't have it, post

But you discovered they did have it, you said they found all of them.

For the reasons mentioned it's just not to hand at the time. Sometimes you get lucky, someone's form has to be in the first place they look or on the top of a stack of them and someone's will be last, most will be in between.

And on a few occasions they would tell me "I will look for it" then vanish for up to 20 minutes then come back and claim they checked everywhere in the office and since they can't find it I must of never handed it in.

Imagine you are the person answering the phone but having to go off looking for something. While you are looking, what happens to the work on your desk? How about the queue of other callers waiting to get through.

They're not your concern. Lucky you. But they are the concern of the poor sod trying to do their work but can't because they are understaffed and they are spending their time trying to help people on the phone but they can't and they're in a vicious circle. Have you ever found something that was where you already looked but you didn't see it the first time? It happens. Unless you're perfect.

If it took a long time to find for both cases why did it take MINUTES after each high level complaint to find multiple copies of documents and id?

Dumb luck. Do you really believe someone was sitting on it and hiding it? Sometimes something is in the first place you look, sometimes not. It's not rocket science.

Mersey_2

All of the above are excuses why maladministration occurs (delays, losing docs, failing to reply to correspondence, etc); but, I have some sympathy with the view above that it shouldn't take a complaint to HQ to get the office to make an effort to find the doc.


It's easy to forget that the DWP Service Standards state JCP staff are meant to be: friendly and helpful, behave professionally, respect privacy, treat with respect, be customer-focused, recognise complaints and readily admit failings....and quite a few other things that I've yet to experience in reading correspondence and helping claimants with their appeals and complaints.

Lanzarote1938

Mersey wrote: »

It's easy to forget that the DWP Service Standards state JCP staff are meant to be: friendly and helpful, behave professionally, respect privacy, treat with respect, be customer-focused, recognise complaints and readily admit failings....and quite a few other things that I've yet to experience in reading correspondence and helping claimants with their appeals and complaints.

Most of these points would also apply the other way. Having worked in a similar client dealing role I think i would rather eat my own hand than do it again.
Many of the DWP, Housing Benefit officers are poorly paid, certainly not paid enough to put up with insults and threats on a regular basis.

All those complaining, having been claiming for many many years, should be offered work experience for a couple of months in the organisations they moan about so vociferously

dekaspace

missapril75 wrote: »

A problem when you work in an office that receives things by fax is that your fax is not the only fax received.

If you know a fax is on the way, great. Go and get it. The only thing is you might pick it up thinking it's all for you but when you get back to your desk three floors up you then discover that there are some pages that don't appear to fit with yours. Or someone else took yours.

Or it's someone's job to retrieve the faxes and distribute them and that might mean that they have a dozen faxes since they last collected them, of anything up to a dozen pages each so they have to sort out where each one starts and each one stops. And then identify where in the building each one should go and do something to get it there. Back through the internal system? And what if while someone is delivering a dozen faxes to different places on different floors, someone else is looking for a document and they just looked in one pile five minutes before the fax they are looking for lands on that pile.

Now the fax is where it should be but someone already looked where it should be and now they're wasting time looking in other places where it cannot be....are you getting the picture?

But you discovered they did have it, you said they found all of them.

For the reasons mentioned it's just not to hand at the time. Sometimes you get lucky, someone's form has to be in the first place they look or on the top of a stack of them and someone's will be last, most will be in between.

Imagine you are the person answering the phone but having to go off looking for something. While you are looking, what happens to the work on your desk? How about the queue of other callers waiting to get through.

They're not your concern. Lucky you. But they are the concern of the poor sod trying to do their work but can't because they are understaffed and they are spending their time trying to help people on the phone but they can't and they're in a vicious circle. Have you ever found something that was where you already looked but you didn't see it the first time? It happens. Unless you're perfect.

Dumb luck. Do you really believe someone was sitting on it and hiding it? Sometimes something is in the first place you look, sometimes not. It's not rocket science.

Where did I say the person vanishing for 20 minutes was on the phone? Since I never did, this was in PERSON and I never asked them to do it, I went in almost daily as I lived locally and kept getting told its not there (hence filling in a new form) Well actually once or twice (literally that) I did complain in person saying its unacceptable and stood my ground, I never asked them to look for it though just said whats to stop them claiming I never handed it in again, and the advisor going "oh its only a document, whats the problem doing it again"(it was about 20 pages long)

And you assume that was the only 2 times I had problems, and a complaint found the items instantly. or is waiting 3 months on one occasion and 6 months on another and both times when going above their heads they pulled their finger out "dumb luck" oh it was the same council that last time I lived there for just 6 months they changed their system which should of been better but was actually as bad to they didn't even hand out forms anymore you had to make an appointment and fill in form there and then, except they cancelled on me saying advisor was sick (after waiting almost 3 weeks for the interview) and rearranging it for another 3 weeks later only to find they put on their records I failed to attend so lost those 2 and a half weeks and my appeal failed.

Thats how bad their administration is, just as parents were OVERCHARGED council tax for years and they refused to refund it just saying they would "credit their account" problem being this was around late Feb and they wanted to credit the whole amount to that years account and not keep any of it for further years i.e lets say they overpaid £1000, and the final payment for the year was £25, so they had £975 credit, they lost that £975, the same council used to send threatening letters demanding payment within 7 days when they kept wrongfully claiming parents didn't pay that months council tax, so one rule for them and another for the public.

You are making EXCUSES, I bet even if someone hand delivered a letter to DWP you would say it takes time to hand it to the correct department.

Please also tell me where I said I don't compromise or do you think months waiting whilst they imply or outright tell you if they don't have it you never handed it in is acceptable? Not days, not even weeks but MONTHS, so in cases like the council are you saying in 3 months they couldn't locate even ONE form, oh and for your information the person who rang me THEMSELF told me it took them minutes to find and they don't know why I as told they were lost/not handed in.

And when things are handed into the local council they staple a front page to the documents stating whats attached and persons name address and housing benefit account number, they even write some things on the documents themselves.

So even if misplaced the documents have the housing benefit account number on.

And to let you know, the advisors in jobcentre would ring across and TELL them they were sending a fax across and to the relevant department dealing with the issue, sure that still may go to a hub but they were aware one was getting sent.

What is your point when you say they did have it? Since that is what I am saying they claimed they DIDN'T, even after MONTHS

When they have been sent multiple copies of documents, by post, fax and still claim months later that they never recieved even a single one then its a problem,

Even when knowing that gets a claimaint sanctioned as it was claimed they never handed in documents.

Why are you making excuses for them and saying its acceptable? Do you work for them?

dekaspace

Lanzarote1938 wrote: »

Most of these points would also apply the other way. Having worked in a similar client dealing role I think i would rather eat my own hand than do it again.
Many of the DWP, Housing Benefit officers are poorly paid, certainly not paid enough to put up with insults and threats on a regular basis.

All those complaining, having been claiming for many many years, should be offered work experience for a couple of months in the organisations they moan about so vociferously

I worked when I was 16 for them, I know what its like, and I would be glad to work in their job.

Its a double standard that when people on low incomes complain they are told they should be happy to work and not complain or the foreigners would love to take their jobs.

When someone has a problem who claims benefits with someone low paid they are told to feel sympathy for the person getting low pay.

I worked in a call centre where threats from the public were common, even had a few bomb scares and was common to get customers demand personal information to sue you personally all that for minimum wage, had no sympathy then in fact was told I should be greatful to work and pay tax so I didn't get benefits.