EU National Wrongly Advised

I think we are all aware of cases where EU nationals are wrongly advised to claim IS by their local JCPoffice when they are on JSA, and claims for compensation usually work OK in these circumstances.

I now have a case where the client tried to claim JSA on the national helpline, only to be directed to claim IS instead - which was refused 2 months later on R2R grounds. No appeal possible as she only has a R2R as a jobseeker. So I am gearing up to make a compensation claim, but as it is the national helpline and not JCP, who do I send it to?

I had another client who had mistakenly claimed IS with no R2R for that benefit, (she had also lodged an appeal but it had no prospects of success). I told her to claim JSA on the helpline - she came back a week later to say that she had tried 5 times on the phone, only to be told that she was not entitled to claim JSA whilst her appeal for IS was pending. I had to call the claims line with her present and explain the situation, and a claim was then taken. The operator told me something along the lines that she would have to overide the benefit options bit, which indicated that the computerised system may default to an IS claim where someone appears to have an entitlement (eg single parent, pregnant) - but this does not, of course, take into account the circumstances of EU nationals.

Has anyone else come across this?

Thanks!

But in many cases backdated JSA is not an option because the applicant won’t have been meeting the job seeking conditions for JSA entitlement during the earlier period?

The last one of these that I had, my lengthy battle for an Ex -Gratia payment was rewarded with the grand sum of £25