UC call on bank holiday

andygb

Just been talking to a mate who is on UC. His contact at the DWP arranged his catch up phone call for today, which is a bank holiday. I have worked for local government and civil service in the past, and I know that they do not work on bank holidays. He said that his contact is working from home. I am wondering if this is a scam by some DWP staff (or maybe just this one) to claim double time, phoning people at weekends or bank holidays.

Should they even be contacting people on a bank holiday?

andygb

ABurdenShared said:

You've worked for local government and the civil service in the past, and you've never heard of overtime nor how it works?

There are no provisions that I'm aware of that give welfare recipients bank holidays off from their conditionality, if the office is open then they'd be subject to attending appointments as normal.

The office isn't open, read the post again.

NedS

DWP staff are working from home at present, and some offices/areas are offering bank holiday overtime where the work demands, so it is not unreasonable that your friend may have had a telephone appointment today. As always, DWP staff should clearly identify themselves when calling you and ask you to confirm your identity. If you are unsure the call is a legitimate call from DWP, you can ask the DWP agent to verify the call is legitimate by posting a message to your journal, which confirms their identity and provides a record of the conversation. As the appointment was pre-booked for today, and the DWP member of staff called at the pre-arranged time, I'd say it looks pretty legitimate.

coffeehound

Don't civil servants earn double time plus time off in lieu for bank holidays?  No surprise they want to work BHs!

huckster

It is not exactly double time and no they don't get time off in lieu.

DWP offices are now often open on Saturdays, so there is no OT for Saturdays.  Then there is a rate for Sundays and B/Hols.

The issue at the moment for DWP is the huge task in dealing with so many claims that require regular appointments.  And the appointments are changing from being by phone to face to face at the Job Centre.  If they are trying to call people on a Bank Holiday Monday, this may be for those that have been difficult to contact previously.

TELLIT01

It seems that in the eyes of some DWP can never do the right thing.  There is a huge backlog so additional working hours have been approved to try to clear that.  The other option is to let claimants wait even longer for claims to be processed or changes to be implemented.  Would the second option be preferred by those complaining?

If the person referred to by the OP is claiming because they are currently unemployed, every day is a holiday for them so the day the call is made really makes little difference.

TheShape

huckster said:

It is not exactly double time and no they don't get time off in lieu.

DWP offices are now often open on Saturdays, so there is no OT for Saturdays.  Then there is a rate for Sundays and B/Hols.

The issue at the moment for DWP is the huge task in dealing with so many claims that require regular appointments.  And the appointments are changing from being by phone to face to face at the Job Centre.  If they are trying to call people on a Bank Holiday Monday, this may be for those that have been difficult to contact previously.

I'm not sure what the current OT arrangements are but time of in lieu as well as BH overtime rate has certainly been available since the start of the pandemic.  I can't remember if that was still in place at Easter 2021.  It may still be in place.

Whether someone gets overtime for working on a Saturday depends on an individual's contract.  Staff that are not contracted to work on Saturdays will be paid overtime (at Saturday rate) for working on a Saturday.  Staff whose contract includes Saturday working won't be paid overtime simply for working on a Saturday but may be paid overtime (at Saturday rate) if they have already worked full-time equivalent hours in that week and then work on the Saturday.

As you say, the huge number of claims taken since last March has led to a lot of Sunday and Bank Holiday working in order to keep up with the workload.

TheShape

andygb said:

Just been talking to a mate who is on UC. His contact at the DWP arranged his catch up phone call for today, which is a bank holiday. I have worked for local government and civil service in the past, and I know that they do not work on bank holidays. He said that his contact is working from home. I am wondering if this is a scam by some DWP staff (or maybe just this one) to claim double time, phoning people at weekends or bank holidays.

Should they even be contacting people on a bank holiday?

There are usually two explanations for someone being booked an appointment on a Bank Holiday:
1) A high workload meant that staff are working overtime to help with workload.
2)Someone forgot to close the diaries for the bank holiday and someone didn't notice and booked an appointment on that date.  I can't remember if the UC system automatically blocks diaries on public holidays or if it is done manually.

Other diary booking systems previously had needed to be blocked out manually and it wasn't uncommon to notice that a diary full of appointments had been booked for a bank holiday.  I've certainly seen appointments booked for Christmas Day when someone forgot to block a diary and someone didn't clock that they were booking an appointment for 25th December.  Someone will need to be on the ball this year with Christmas Day falling on the Saturday and the Christmas Day (substitute day) falling on the Monday.