I have a client who signed on for jsa june 08 then started a two day course(16hours) sept 08. His jsa has been stopped on the grounds that he is not available for work even though he has said that he is willing to give up his study if he finds a job. He has appealed the decision and a tribunal date has been sent.


He has shown that he has been actively seeking work but the jobs he has applied for have been part-time and the submission by DWP state that this is indicative that he is not available for work because of his studies. Stating that he is not actually looking for full-time 40 hours a week work.


Dose any one know of any comm decision dealing with available for work? Or any other tactic which may be useful in his appeal.


cheers

joanie

What restrictions on availability are there in his jobseeker's agreement?

Why has he only applied for part-time jobs?

his jodseekers agreement states he is available something like 8 to 8 monday to saturday.

His work seekering pattern was over a six week period and he claims the jobs he sought were the ones ha saw adverstised? they ranged from six hours up wards. One was for 30 hours.

The DWP submission states that they were jobs avaiable for full time work in the period he was searching.

OK, nother tack.

Was he still within the 13 week period (if he ever had one) during which he was entitled to limit his jobsearch to his only or main occupation? And if so, have they given details of these alleged jobs? They will be referring to jobs available in the jobcentre, I assume.

If he wasn't, were those jobs suitable - eg, did they require experience or qualifications he didn't have?

I only ask because I recently had an "actively seeking" case where the guy had said he was looking for retail work and one of the jobs they suggested was working in a fabric shop advising cutomers about choice and suitability of fabrics for different purposes! He had never done anything with fabrics in his life.

They are clearly using the type of job he was applying for to prop up their theory that he was only looking for work that would allow him to continue with his course. Can you show that any of the jobs he did apply for would have been incompatible with the course - would have required him to work at times when he would have been attending it?

Looking for jobs as few as 6 hours a week doesn't help him - he should not be looking for jobs of fewer than 16 hours a week (though I suppose he could have 2 part-time jobs, lots of people do).