I’m going to start putting up short posts about the incredible difficulties that people can have getting through to their councils and to the right people to speak to at the DWP on the phone.
I regularly call councils or the DWP on behalf of others or to get information, and am inevitably appalled at the trouble I have getting through and/or finding the right department, or getting callbacks, etc. These systems are getting worse. They have to be fixed. Public organisations can’t be allowed to exclude people who need support in this way. There’s no doubt in my mind that people must miss out on benefit entitlements everywhere now, because the systems they need to navigate to get to those entitlements are a dysfunctional shambles. This must be especially true for people who can’t use a computer and/or don’t have easy access to one. I find the whole thing challenging and confusing, and get lost in the system even though I make these calls a lot, as I say.
Let’s take as our first example a hopeless call I made to Barking and Dagenham council on Tuesday morning to ask about making a new housing benefit and council tax benefit claim for someone.
This is what it is like.
I made my first call at about 10am using a number about housing benefit that I found advertised on the council’s site: 020 8227 2970.
Wasn’t entirely sure if this was the right number, but continued as it seemed to take me to a general automated switchboard for the council and anyway, you’d hope that someone would soon put you right if you needed another number.
An automated message service gave me 5 options. I chose, 5, for general enquiries.
After that, I had to:
Choose 1 – for revenues and benefits
Choose 2 – for housing benefit and council tax benefit
Choose 1 – for new claims
At this point, the automated service told me that the only way to claim those benefits was to apply online. The service said that there were computers to use free of charge at council One Stop Shops. I imagine that some people wouldn’t know what a One Stop Shop was, but this service didn’t offer much chance to find out. When it finished the One Stop Shop message, it simply hung up in my ear.
So – I called back at about 11am and went through the same number selection process, except this time, I chose 3 instead of 1 as the last option. This was the number to choose if you were an existing claimant. I chose it in the hope that there would be an officer at the end of it. An automated message said that there would be a waiting time of between five and ten minutes, I think it was. In the event, I waited on hold for more than 20 minutes for someone to pick up the call. I’d be interested to know how people on pay as you go phones are affected by this sort of waiting-time. I use a pay as you go phone from time to time and have to top up the minutes.
The officer who finally answered the phone was helpful. He told me where the One Stop Shops with the computers were and the documentation to take for housing benefit and council tax benefit claims. The claims still needed to be made online, though. He said that anyone who had trouble using a computer should take someone along to help them, because there weren’t staff at the One Stop Shops to assist people through a whole claim (the assumption here being is that everyone has someone who can and will help).
I wanted to know more. Not everyone has a helpful someone on hand who can and will assist with a complex online claim. A number of the people whose stories I’ve reported on this site have learning and literacy difficulties, and don’t use computers at all. It’s not enough to say that people in these situations should bring someone to help. Not everyone has that option. So, I asked about home visits for people in those sorts of situations, because the council advertises a home visit and claim assistance service on its site. The officer said that could be done, but that the waiting time for an appointment was three weeks. He said that services were under-resourced. Which they obviously are. That’s the problem, in a very big way.
This call last over 30 minutes. Thirty minutes is a long time when you’re trying to sort out money and benefit issues. I’ve sat with stressed people as they’ve called councils to try and sort out housing benefit and rent problems. These waiting-times and dead-end messages have people climbing the walls. I get that councils are in financial meltdown, but that doesn’t mean the meltdown or the fallout is acceptable. You need time, money and a computer to have any real chance of navigating a lot of this. Anyone without those things will obviously be excluded.
I will put up more of these posts, because as I say, I make a lot of these sorts of calls for people. Like you, I’m sure, I’ve read that a lot of benefit money goes unclaimed. It’s hard not to conclude that at least one reason for that is that people give up on a claim after their first attempt to get sense out of the system.
Wait until Universal Credit is really ‘universal’. Everything claimed online with complex forms, phone advice difficult, and charged currently at 45p minute.
So many people are going to fail, get sanctioned, or simply starve.
This is the reality of a poisonous welfare system deliberately skewed against the claimant.
It’s amazingly obstructive. Worthies say that everyone is online but they’re really not. And you have to be pretty web-savvy to use some of these online forms. They tell you to allow half an hour or more for some of the applications. I’ve done a few DHP applications that way – you have to know your way around things to get it done.
DWP and job centre plus or should i say joke shop plus.Are not fit for purpose.All they do are send be on coures that are pointless and humiliating.Avoid work skills course with remploy.It is childish patonisng bullshit.I won’t to anymore dwp courses.If they sanction me i will kick of at the job centre.
I need to apply for pension credit but cannot do so by phone as the call will take me too long as I need to be on hand for my father as he needs 24/7 care. I cannot find any way to be given a form to fill in. Desperate.
pension credit is easy when you ring them…not a long process at all
I’ve just had to fill in a form to apply for state pension,had questions so needed to call and speak to an advisor.First person ,after a 10 minute wait couldn’t answer because I hadn’t yet made a claim so told me to ring back on the same number and choose a different option.Cue another long wait and someone who was obviously in a call centre and could only type basic information onto the form.Couldn’t answer any of my question and said they’d write to me a couple of weeks before my pension starts.A wasted afternoon ,no information and a lot of worry and stress as to what I’ll get,how and when it’ll be paid and how it’ll affect other benefits.It’s a farce.Given its the same week when I’ve made several equally frustrating and expensive calls to the dwp (the shortest wait there to speak to someone being 22 minutes) I’ve come to the conclusion that this is made deliberately complicated to put people off claiming.
it’s a big joke I was on hold for over a hour
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Yes.. Been there and still going there…. Adds to my stress , anxiety and IBS( amongst other conditions)
Re ‘One Stop Shop’ computer access, in LB Camden the ‘West Euston Partnership’ [sic] has a ‘One Stop Shop’ on Hampstead Road near Warren Street Stn at junction with Euston Road. Given the prominence of that site, I wonder how oversubscribed it might be?
The contempt of central and local government budget setters for rights of vulnerable citizens vs the demands of ‘austerity’ leaves vulnerable public service users not only with longer waits for attention on non-free official call numbers, but also more marginalised in terms of contact time with social care workers and access to, say, public libraries and local community centre facilities.
Against that backdrop, those vulnerable people become more-ready prey to confidence trickster Identity Theft scams of the sort where ‘the bank’ telephones people asking them to confirm their full name and date of birth. In the ‘noughties’ before I became a social care worker to adults with learning difficulties, the BBC2 ‘Working Lunch’ programme’s audience input informed me of scammers’ practice of calling people who happened to be at home and asking them for their identity data; and while I was a social care worker, my service users told me when I raised the matter that they had had such calls. One service user was so flattered by the attention that he gave over his full name, address and date of birth despite the fact that he did not have an account with the supposed ‘MBNA’ bank but only a Post Office account for channelling his benefit payments through.
Now, with the advent of Universal Credit’s nationwide roll-out, the Government is making it easier for potential Universal Credit claimants to set up bank accounts. The Camden New Journal, meanwhile, reports Four arrests after private details of vulnerable residents are ‘stolen’ from Camden Council: “FOUR people have been arrested after the private details of some of Camden’s most vulnerable residents were “stolen” from Town Hall computer systems – raising fears that personal information has already been passed to cold-call scammers, the New Journal has learned.”
Thus I believe that centralisation of people’s data in the benefits system would make vulnerable people more vulnerable, especially as the database for Universal Credit will be placed offshore, where wages are cheaper and thus the temptation to sell the data to identity thieves is all the greater.
I had to take my claim to tribunal and I won on 1st July 2016.however I am still waiting for the money to be paid as there is a delay with the paperwork..the worse part is it could still be denied if they decide to appeal the apeal
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