When is a sanction applied from?

I have a client who has for the last 4 months lived off his savings and has at no piont made a claim for benefit. He was in employment and left voluntarily (or I think the DWP will see it this way). 

I can’t decide what this passage in CPAG means - ‘if you have not been paid any JSA since the sanctionable acton, the sanction period starts on the first day of the benefit week in which it took place’. See pg 1130 under ‘When the sanction period starts’.

So the question is…if he claims JSA now, will the client be sanctioned for 13 weeks or does the fact that he has not claimed for more than 13 weeks mean he has already served his sentence as it were and so no sanction would be applied? (13+ weeks have passed since the ‘sanctionable action)

Cheers!

Cheers Tony

Question now is…can the GP be convinced to supply a sick line. Only time will tell.

Tony Bowman - 13 September 2013 11:54 AM

s.69(4) of the JSA regs seems to cover this (new version from 22/10/12)

(4) Where a sanctionable failure which is specified in section 19(2)(a), (b) or (d)
occurs on or before the date on which a claim for a jobseeker’s allowance is made–

(a) except where sub-paragraph (b) applies, the reduction relating to that failure
is to have effect for the period set out in paragraph (1) that applies in the
claimant’s case (the “applicable sanction period”) minus the period beginning
with the day after the date of the sanctionable failure and ending with the
day before the date of claim.

It starts on the date of claim (dunno why it doesn’t just that).

I think that it actually runs from the date of the failure Tony.

Richard says that it is more than 13 weeks since the failure, so I read Reg 69(4) as saying that the sanction period has expired before the date of claim, as you have to subtract the gap from the length of the sanction. See the last bullet point on p1129, and particularly the new Reg 70A:

‘70A.—(1) No reduction is to be made under section 19 (higher-level sanctions) where–
(a) the sanctionable failure is listed in section 19(2)(a), (b), or (d);
(b) the sanctionable failure occurs before a claim to a jobseeker’s allowance is made; and
(c) the period of the reduction as calculated under sub-paragraph (a) or (b) of regulation 69(4) is the same as, or shorter than, the period between the date of the sanctionable failure and the date of claim.’

Jon