Another example of Universal Credit lunacy:
I’m speaking with a young Universal Credit claimant who lives in Colchester BUT must carry out benefit compliance activities through Croydon jobcentre. Instructions for her work-related activities come from Croydon jobcentre. She must participate in work-focused “telephone appointments” with Croydon jobcentre from her flat in Colchester.
This is ludicrous. This woman has to look for work in Colchester by calling Croydon jobcentre.
Wtf.
This arrangement has yielded no results as far as finding work goes.
Which is hardly surprising. Croydon jobcentre surely knows next to nothing about Colchester’s employment scene (I’ve been to meetings at Croydon jobcentre and have to say they seemed to struggle with things even in Croydon). Colchester is 72 miles, two hours and several overpriced train journeys from Croydon according to gmaps and the national rail planner. Finding work locally takes local knowledge. People need a local jobcentre. Ironically enough, they need local jobcentres more than ever as Universal Credit is rolled out. Universal Credit is supposed to be a world-beating online benefits-and-job-finding experience, but there are so many problems with it that people inevitably want and need face-to-face help. They don’t trust the DWP to give quick answers or help online.
This sort of convoluted “telephone appointments from elsewhere” situation must affect people all over the place. It apparently came about because Colchester doesn’t have full Universal Credit and won’t until April 2018. This woman made her initial Universal Credit claim at Croydon (a monumental headache in itself. She went weeks without money). Then, she moved to Colchester for cheaper housing. Her Universal Credit claim remained in Croydon, because Colchester can’t manage her claim.
I rang the Universal Credit line last week for clarification on such situations. I didn’t get any. The officer I spoke to said decisions were made based on postcodes and that people with problems should call.
“They [the DWP] say I’m an “online applicant,” the young woman told me.
Needless to say, things hit the fan hard when problems arise with this woman’s Universal Credit account – which they inevitably do given the DWP’s notoriously unreliable bureaucracy. Visiting Croydon jobcentre to talk to her adviser there is hardly an option. The young woman must sort out problems out on the phone, or online. People absolutely hate this. They don’t trust their online Universal Credit accounts (a big problem which needs wider publicising, btw). People don’t trust that messages they leave for the DWP in their accounts will be answered quickly, if at all. I have screenshots of accounts where urgent claimant questions have gone unanswered (ie a question is there, but an answer is not).
So. The DWP won’t help this woman find work via this arrangement – but it will find ways to sanction her. Systems to catch people out are always in place, or, at least, claimants always pay when the systems they must use are unreliable and/or don’t work.
Last week, this young woman found a Failure to Attend Appointment Notice in her online Universal Credit journal (I’ve posted the image at the top of the page). The DWP claimed that she’d missed a telephone appointment with Croydon jobcentre. Missing this phone appointment could most certainly have meant a sanction.
The woman says she rang the DWP about the appointment because the DWP didn’t call her for it. She spent a nervous age online and on the phone trying to find out if another appointment could be set. Dropping into Croydon jobcentre to find out if anyone had tried to call her for the phone appointment was hardly a starter from Colchester.
The woman says that when she finally caught up with her Croydon jobcentre adviser, the adviser said she couldn’t understand why that phone appointment had even been put in the system in the first place, because she [the adviser] hadn’t been at work that day and so wouldn’t have rung for a telephone appointment.
It’s not just me, is it.
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Update:
To add a couple of extra problems with this woman’s online Universal Credit account – I’m posting the examples below to demonstrate some of the mistakes that turn up in people’s accounts.
These mistakes and problems foster the lack of trust that people have in Universal Credit’s online systems:
- This woman’s Croydon rent total still shows in her Universal Credit account. It is listed alongside her LHA total for Colchester (the amount she is paid in housing costs is correct for Colchester). She’s tried to get the rent total changed to reflect the rent she pays in Colchester several times.
- She is repaying an advance Universal Credit loan. The amounts shown in her Universal Credit account for repayment deductions have varied from about £528 a month to £100 a month. The reasons given for these deductions have also varied. The proposed £528 deduction caused particular concern when notice of that amount appeared in her Universal Credit account that month.
People often say they ring the Universal Credit helpline before their payment dates each month to check that they will be paid and confirm the amount they will get. This is particularly true for people who are paying back loans and are not confident that deductions will be consistent from month to month. People just don’t have confidence in these systems.
Now we are really seeing what a clusterfuck Universal Credit really is, and it’s interesting to note that only on the eve of it starting to affect those in work that there are calls to at least postpone this crazy scheme that is only effective at messing up people’s lives.
Others have said it, and I’m repeating it. The social security system was, and is complex because people and their needs are complex, and only a blithering idiot would have had the great idea of tampering with it. In the past many of us had problems and issues with our benefits, but it was a simple and easy matter to go along to the benefit office and deal with a human being and have the matter sorted. Online systems can be fine, but that’s only the case if someone is comfortable with technology, which many aren’t and and many also find using phone helplines frustratingly difficult. For such a complex system dealing with the needs of humans, humans need to be intimately involved with the system. I’m also wondering exactly how well the new digital front end, which is up-to-date and 2017 meshes and fits with the computer backend, (which handles the payments and other records) which is, apparently, classic 1970s technology.
Perhaps removing the human bits at the front end is as much a mistake as removing the humanity that was once at the core of the social security system?
Spot on there. People’s needs really are complicated. You can’t just shove someone with learning and literacy difficulties towards a computer and say Fill In The Form There – and yet I’ve seen that done.
God, so true. Way back in the 70’s, if you had a problem, you could reverse charge to the office, and in extreme cases, they’d send an officer out with emergency cash.
She should complain about the action she has been asked to do as been unreasonable. Looking for jobs in areas that the office she has to deal with is, or might be unfamiliar with, could be claimed as a form of unreasonable behavior by the person who gave the instuction for her to deal with an office outside the area.
Universal Credit, social control of the poor and those who will never have any stake in capitalism, and won’t be voting Conservative.
What about those who can’t use the telephone? Typically stroke survivors when aphasia is one of the more likely outcomes.
And people who can’t use computers or don’t have easy access to one… facts are I meet people with one or other or both of those issues ALL THE TIME. Does my head in. There’s no way a lot of the people I talk with can participate in this system. It’s just not possible.
Surely even aTory with all their resources can see this system is not appropriate especially for people with medical issues let alone people who can not use a computer or afford a phone.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; it’s a complete and utter shambles. DWP is unfit for purpose, as is this entire Tory Government.
Personally, I do not think there should be any telephone appointments.too much can go wrong, from being unable to get through on time, not to mention the expense. If it has to be done this way, it should be the advisors phoning the claimant at set times.
I still believe this whole shambles should have been strangled at birth by opposition parties.And regardless of who gets back in at the next election, we all know a version of these reforms will still go ahead.
A disgusting system by a inept tory regime
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