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You may be the appointee but we still want to see the claimant – and we have no time to read Journal entries
Ask for the appointee details to be pinned.
Response from DWP regarding another claimant who complains that Journal messages are not responded to:
‘With regard to responses to online journal messages; the UC journal is a tool used by UC claimants and our staff to keep a record of activities, provide and store information and is a channel of communication. Our staff endeavour to reply to journal messages as quickly as possible. However, there is no target time for responding to journal messages. Therefore, if————- has any urgent enquiries, [they are] encouraged to call our UC Helpline to discuss these issues.’
I’ve suggested this be made clear to all claimants.
A follow up question…if someone already has a personal appointee, and it’s an online claim, does this show up anywhere on their account, ie in the journal or elsewhere?
I don’t think it does. For Corporate Appointees we’ve been advised to make sure that there is a note pinned to the top of the journal advising that there’s an appointee. There’s an Agent Led Process (ALP) in the guidance they issued last year.
That, and the absolute nigtmare a friend of mine had; being contnually rebuffed despite being appointed on behalf of his son, makes me think there isn’t a special “appointee” field on the GUI of the build.
More worries about Journal messages, telephone calls and UC capacity to manage these.
In this instance, the claimant is on LCWRA and put an urgent message on the Journal as CT bailiffs wanted payment within 14 days and she needed to make sure the arrears were going to be paid direct from UC.
6 days later there was no response: the matter was only resolved via a phone call, which someone else had to make as the claimant cannot use the phone.
Claimant then received a Journal message (at 3am - ?) telling her that her money was to stop as she had not reported earnings - this despite DWP being aware that owing to mental health problems she had not worked for 4 months.
Someone else again had to call UC to get matters straightened out; this person comments:
‘I asked why no-one had bothered to answer the other message and [the adviser] said they prioritise phone calls and to ring but I can’t wait 45 mins on the phone to be cut off only to ring again and again and not get through.’