Universal credit unfair closure

TerriE23

I wonder if anyone has had this experience and how they dealt with it. 

I am paid UC on the 9th of the month. 

I logged in on the 9th as I did not receive this months payment to find that my account has been closed. 

It appeared that I had some actions in the journal to complete between the 12th and 21st (in between payment dates) I have claimed for a two years now, and only log in once a month to check the account (usually receiving a text message advising me to check my messages and an email) 

on this occasion, I was entirely unaware of a message in the journal. I was not notified that action was required, nor was I made aware that the account had been closed - not by any means of communication from the DWP.

they say they will not reconsider this closure and that I have to reclaim - which now means I will lose over a months money. 

Has anyone else experienced this? I believe there must be a glitch in the UC administrative system. In their rejection letter, they have stated that my preferred means of communication is SMS, and said that they did send me this, but this is entirely false and a lie as I have proof but nobody will listen. 

Any advice welcome! 

TheShape

What action or actions did you fail to complete?

HillStreetBlues

TerriE23 said:

I wonder if anyone has had this experience and how they dealt with it. 

I am paid UC on the 9th of the month. 

I logged in on the 9th as I did not receive this months payment to find that my account has been closed. 

It appeared that I had some actions in the journal to complete between the 12th and 21st (in between payment dates) I have claimed for a two years now, and only log in once a month to check the account (usually receiving a text message advising me to check my messages and an email) 

on this occasion, I was entirely unaware of a message in the journal. I was not notified that action was required, nor was I made aware that the account had been closed - not by any means of communication from the DWP.

they say they will not reconsider this closure and that I have to reclaim - which now means I will lose over a months money. 

Has anyone else experienced this? I believe there must be a glitch in the UC administrative system. In their rejection letter, they have stated that my preferred means of communication is SMS, and said that they did send me this, but this is entirely false and a lie as I have proof but nobody will listen. 

Any advice welcome! 

What were/are your UC commitments?

TerriE23

I can’t see as the account was closed and doesn’t allow me to click into it. This was in a 7 day timeframe. I received no notification of the account closure either. 

TheShape

You say you've had a rejection letter.  Does this mean you have asked them to reconsider the claim closure?

It would seem extremely quick to have received this if you only discovered your claim was closed on the 9th given today is only the 12th (unless I've misunderstood and you discovered on 9th November or earlier that your claim was closed).  Mandatory reconsiderations usually take some time although I don't know if reconsideration of claim closures are prioritised.

I understand that you should be able to see the claim closure reason in the account along with your right to request a mandatory reconsideration.

If you cannot access your account to see why the claim has closed you will need to contact Universal Credit and ask them to explain the reason for the claim closure.  You want to know what action or actions that they believe you failed to complete.

TerriE23

Yes you’re correct. I discovered it was closed on the 9th - asked for a mandatory reconsideration the same day and received the letter on the 11th stating that the closure is correct, and the reasoning of the closure is that I did not accept my commitments. (Unsure what they were though) 
My argument is, that I was not informed that there were commitments to accept. If I had been informed, I would have logged in and done so. 

This is not at an annual time, for example a yearly renewal. I had no reason to log in to UC to check the journal during this 7 day period. 

It just seems entirely unfair to expect me to have known there were commitments in the journal without them emailing, texting etc advising 

huckster

Those claimant commitments were most likely added after the UC statement in November and you did not accept. UC is quite strict that they will close claims if commitments not accepted within 7 days. They will normally check to see if a claimant is noted as vulnerable and if this is the case they will try to make contact before closing claim, to provide opportunity to accept commitments to avoid claim closure.

You could appeal further by going to Court tribunal process and as part of this you can provide evidence of no text message being received. And you can also use the DWP complaints process.

Before you appeal or complain check to see if you would be due a UC payment considering your employment earnings during the period.

TerriE23

Yes I was due a payment on the 9th Dec, which I didn’t receive and is the only reason I logged in to the account. They also didn’t notify me that they had closed the account 10 days prior.
surely it is policy to inform users? Just posting in an online journal with no notification seems incorrect and unfair on service users.
I now have been told that I must reapply - which will take 6-8 weeks and I will not receive any payments until mid Jan at the earliest. The last payment received was 9th Nov so it is a long time to not receive any payments and will leave me unable to pay bills.
I have now gone through the process of appealing via tribunal. 

Spoonie_Turtle

TerriE23 said:

Yes I was due a payment on the 9th Dec, which I didn’t receive and is the only reason I logged in to the account. They also didn’t notify me that they had closed the account 10 days prior.
surely it is policy to inform users? Just posting in an online journal with no notification seems incorrect and unfair on service users.
I now have been told that I must reapply - which will take 6-8 weeks and I will not receive any payments until mid Jan at the earliest. The last payment received was 9th Nov so it is a long time to not receive any payments and will leave me unable to pay bills.
I have now gone through the process of appealing via tribunal. 

I believe you should have the same assessment period dates as before because you'll be reclaiming within six months, which would mean a payment on 9th Jan.  Not ideal but perhaps not as terrible as 6-8 weeks.  So you'll have missed out on one month's money for now which you may be able to get sorted if the tribunal goes in your favour.  (Again, far from ideal I know.)

Yamor

I agree with @Spoonie_Turtle, and just to clarify explicitly what I think they meant:
Although you have appealed the decision to terminate your award, you should still also reclaim now, as that will ensure you get paid in January and will have only missed one payment. This one missing payment will then be the only issue for the appeal (which may well only take place in a few months time).

If you don't reclaim, and rely on the appeal, you will be without any money until the appeal is heard.

On a slightly separate point, it is worth checking the appeal papers (when they arrive) to see what the new commitments were and how they compared to your old ones. I have seen many cases where the new commitments were exactly the same as the old, and had just been generated by the system automatically for whatever reason. If that is the case here, then you would have an even stronger argument for the appeal - that your commitments had not in fact changed, and therefore your original acceptance of your commitments was still valid.

TerriE23

Yamor said:

I agree with @Spoonie_Turtle, and just to clarify explicitly what I think they meant:
Although you have appealed the decision to terminate your award, you should still also reclaim now, as that will ensure you get paid in January and will have only missed one payment. This one missing payment will then be the only issue for the appeal (which may well only take place in a few months time).

If you don't reclaim, and rely on the appeal, you will be without any money until the appeal is heard.

On a slightly separate point, it is worth checking the appeal papers (when they arrive) to see what the new commitments were and how they compared to your old ones. I have seen many cases where the new commitments were exactly the same as the old, and had just been generated by the system automatically for whatever reason. If that is the case here, then you would have an even stronger argument for the appeal - that your commitments had not in fact changed, and therefore your original acceptance of your commitments was still valid.

This is a really helpful point. Thank you