Time limiting and denial of hardship payments

Some claimants have been denied Hardship payments on the ground that the Statement of Circumstance (JSA10) has been submitted too late. Others have had the number of days for which they are paid hardship limited due to the JSA 10 being received late in the sanction period.

There is no legal time limit set for submission of the hardship statement (JSA 10)  It cannot be used as a indicator of the date of the start of hardship, the decision maker has to use different rules to define this and it can be received after the sanction end date. see DMG 35400-35401

There has been a misconception as to how these rules are applied in Leeds jobcentres resulting in claimants being denied Hardship payments.  People are told they are out of time. This is incorrect.  I think this may have affected many people. I wonder if the same misconception is in place in other parts of the country.  The advice stated above shows that even advisers have been working with that misconception.

I am very interested to hear of people who have been denied hardship payments due to this, and those who have been awarded a restricted number of days hardship payment based on the date of receipt of the JSA 10 as a start date for payments and the last day of the sanction used as an end date for payment.

This is extremely important because if the law is incorrectly applied many people may be denied hardship payments.

see also my post at:23rd Jan 2014
Dates of payment of JSA Hardship limited by guidance?

Hi AidanG
Thanks for posting this. Have you had any success in terms of overturning these decisions at MR or are you having to join the endless queue for tribunal? I would imagine that with your client group this is one of the banes of your working life.

The process of MR is a gatekeeping exercise.  It gives the client impression that the matter has been fairly reconsidered and that will be the end of it.  The telephone callback that is made to someone who has just not got the vocabulary or assertion to deal with the Social Security law is a part of this process.. People just fall off the system. They give up.  Many of our clients have chaotic lives in the first place, others just haven’t got the ‘fight’ in them. 

I have got 2 MR’s up and 3 complaints lodged about the hardship issue alone.  Often a concerted effort to show the sanction should not have been placed in the first place is the best course of action, then the hardship decision becomes irrelevant.  But even so if an incorrect hardship decision is made it needs to be challenged thoroughly. They need to be challenged and corrected so that DWP don’t get away with damaging mistakes.

I am getting the impression that it is only me that has seen the error of the Jobcentre decisions in their hardship awards which surprises me because they have admitted to me the matter was endemic. They assure me the matter has been addressed internally. But no one else has examples of this so perhaps it is just a local problem, for local people.

In March there were significant discussions with JCP staff in Leeds around this matter.  It was agreed that guidance did indeed allow for a late submission of a JSA 10 “Hardship Statement” and that payment should be made using the standard rules around vulnerability and finding circumstance that is identified as Hardship. So the late submission of a JSA 10 is in itself not used to limit a Hardship decision in any way so long as Hardship is, or will be the case.

In recent research concerning Hardship Payments and the DMG Chapter 35 I note that 35400 has had an additional note added (in the June update) clarifying the way a late submission of a Hardship Statement is to be treated. Copied below:

DMG35400:
Note 2: Unless 3. applies, the application is merely a form that provides information needed to decide entitlement to hardship payments. It is the evidence the claimant is relying upon to show he is a person in hardship. Entitlement to hardship is from either the 15th day (non vulnerable groups) or the date the DM decides the claimant is a person in hardship and unless 3. applies entitlement is not from the date of the statement of circumstances (see DMG 35401).

Good news, lets hope JCP staff, both back room and frontline, are trained to read their own guidance