Online claims again

hello

My colleague has just been informed by both a BA adviser and the BA manager that new claims must be done online. I seem to remember reading something on Rightsnet - perhaps last year - that this is incorrect - must be alternative - but cannot find the link. If it is incorrect that new JSA claims have to be online, can anyone point me towards the necessary regulation - guidance.

Thanks

As far as I’m aware there is nothing to prevent a paper claim being accepted?

reg 4(1A) of the Claims & Payments Regulations

gov.uk admits that you can still claim by phone, “if you can’t apply online”.

I don’t see any legal basis for the word “can’t” there, but phone claims are obviously “discouraged”. They had/have a policy of leaving you on hold for several minutes, listening to a message suggesting that you claim online, before your call would actually be put in the queue to be answered.

I would agree that paper claims (previously) are asking for trouble.

Evidently been quite a while since I assisted anyone with a claim for JSA/ESA etc. Pretty sure the last time I did you could still print off JSA1 etc. from a pdf on directgov. Didn’t realise you could no longer do that and that they were ‘encouraging’ online claims to this extent.

Out of interest - if anyone has recent experience of claiming online - what is the process like? How user friendly is it?

We recently started an outreach project with our local library specifically to help people with online claims and whilst we haven’t had the numbers we hoped I spent quite a few hours making fake claims (not submitted of course!) to check process, find out what was required and write some crib sheets.

Have to say, for all my initial negativity I found the process clear and easy to understand.  It is a two step process; you have to “register” first and will have to remember username and password. You can save and come back to it if you don’t have all the details required at hand and sign in. 

At the end it gives you all the information you have entered on one page with a clear edit button next to each detail. Overall I would say if you are reasonably computer literate it is an easy to use, well thought out system but of course we all know that for some clients it won’t be so easy (hence the project).

I concur that as a tactical matter we may need to do as they say etc case by case, but we should be taking up the simple matter with DWP - if a claimant ignored the law, s/he would soon rue it. Why can you flout the law? Claims should be available in a format that suits the public, not shoe-horned in to what suits poor administrators or tech-happy wonks.