JSA online claims

I’ve just looked at the DWP’s evaluation of JSA online ‘trailblazers’.

DWP have of course trumpeted an 80% JSA online claim rate.

I wonder if they have achieved their result by, ahem, finessing a wee bit.

This is not a serious, detailed analysis (I’m cherry-picking and perhaps being mildly snarky) but I’m interested by certain things that sit up in the report:

They refer to ‘Nudged online claimants’. Nudge. No, not Eric Idle. How heavy a ‘nudge’ was used??

One scheme ‘removed the option to make a telephony claim at first contact by providing a call back appointment three days after the initial contact… The claim was only taken at this point.’

‘This increased take-up of JSAOL by 11.1 percentage points’. Bet it did.

Another ‘removed the option to make a telephony claim to any claimant who is eligible to use the JSA Online service. Claimants without internet access were directed to a suitable access point at a third party provider or Jobcentre’

Now; consistently supporting people to ‘upskill’ was mentioned, and that’s no bad thing, but overall it smacks of results achieved by force -

‘Some claimants were more resistant, and Contact Centre staff needed to use a variety of techniques to persuade them to claim online.’ This gives me the shivers.

‘In some cases, staff felt claimants exaggerated difficulties in accessing the internet or IT skills in an attempt to claim by phone.’  A tad judgmental, mayhaps?

‘Other staff promoted the online channel to claimants by informing them that Universal Credit would be coming soon and explaining how that will be an online system’ – that wasn’t very truthful was it, given the state of UC’s technology?

Hmmmmmm.

section 3.5 is a disgrace.

basically saying clients lie so they don’t need to claim online.

I had a case last week of a computer illiterate client who had been told by jobcentre he had to claim JSA online, & to go to CAB or Library for help doing so.  After faffing around with lots of options & recorded messages I managed to speak to someone at the national call centre.  I was told that they do not now accept phone claims & do advise people to use CAB or Library.  Alternatively, they can be given an appointment to use a computer at the local jobcentre where someone would be able to help them with it.  However, such appointments cannot be made by the jobcentre - only by the call centre!

Is this now the national procedure, I wonder?

It’s odd; back in the early 2000s, JC+ was trying to push phone-claiming and went round telling people that they weren’t allowed to make paper claims any more. It had to be pointed out time and time again that primary legislation had not changed and that this wasn’t true.

Now the push is for online claims and suddenly the same not-quite-totally-dishonest-but-nearly line is being taken in order to ‘nudge’ people in what JC+ sees as the correct direction.

Come 2015- ‘You make your application by wishing very hard. Paper, phone and online claims are no longer allowed…’

Come 2015…..tap your heels together three times…. and you may get a benefit claim processed.

But only for sole claimants…...

Have a look at regs 19-24 of the Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2013

“appropriate office” means—

(a)an office of the Department for Work and Pensions or any other place designated by the Secretary of State in relation to any case or class of case as a place to, or at which, any claim, notice, document, evidence or other information may be sent, delivered or received for the purposes of these Regulations and includes a postal address specified by the Secretary of State for that purpose; or

(b)in the case of a person who is authorised or required by these Regulations to use an electronic communication for any purpose, an address to which such communications may be sent in accordance with Schedule 2;

So, where the DWP simply say go to a library or local CAB it needs to be challenged to see whether said office is one approved by and compliant with schedule 2 of those regulations.

nevip - thank you, but having looked at those regs. I can’t make head or tail of them!  However, Reg. 19 says:
“19. A person wishing to make a claim for a jobseeker’s allowance, unless the Secretary of State otherwise directs, is required to attend for the purpose of making a claim for that allowance, in person at an appropriate office or such other place, and at such time, as the Secretary of State may specify in that person’s case.”

This does not seem to me to be what the call centre (or job centre) is doing when they tell claimants to go & get help from library or CAB.  For it to comply they would have to specify a particular place & time.  It looks as though what they are doing is using the get out phrase “unless the SoS otherwise directs”.  I guess that if it was argued that they were treating the library or CAB as the office the claimant was directed to they would call it “other such place” so Schedule 2 wouldn’t apply.

Yes, it would seem that reg 19 covers the long standing situation of a person who first contacts the jobcentre with a view to claiming JSA and is then given an appointment to come in and complete a claim form and sign a jobseekers agreement (now, claimant commitment).  Schedule 2 appears to apply only to on line claims.  But, yes, there is now a wide discretion afforded to the DWP to decide in what form the claim should be in any given case.  The powers afforded to the DWP as to what constitutes a claimant commitment, with several statutory are exceptions are even wider.  Basically, a claimant commitment will be in the form of whatever the Secretary of State “sees fit”.  However, be on the lookout for abuses of power and the common law remedies for.