thought it might be useful to put this one a separate thread, and hope folks might add to it or modify or dispute etc. it can be tidied up later.

thanks semi-tone - your number 3 is a big one, and might break down to a few more separate points. i think there are lots of issues about the use of call centres - any views?

jj
___________________

starting with
1. problems with April to April tax year.

(maybe annual awards are too cumbersome and lacking in flexibility for a core 'benefit'. what do others think...?)

2. Rigid single/joint claim requirements, resulting in unfairness.

( not sure that 'rigid' best expresses the problems, which probably need more focus...)

3. Callcentre staff who are obstructive, misinformed, poorly trained,occasionally downright bloody rude and superior (not an exhaustive list and not meant to be generally deprecating of the massed throng of thsoe manning the phones)

4. Less than client friendly award-letters obviously designed by the team that broke the Enigma Code

5. Acknowledements that enquires have been received and are being dealt with would be a nice touch

6 Overpayment decisions ( with prescribed and notifiable calculation schedule) and

7. right of appeal against O/P decisions.

8.

Any views on callcentres? Here's a few to kick off jj.

Callcentres- a nice way to distance claimants and their advisors from the decision makers. A supposed administrative efficiency which has the added bonus of keeping those who screw up distanced from those who want to take them to task.

Callcentres- Call repeatedly with the same enquiry and get a range of different answers - one callcentre advisor told me they work not from the regs or even the TC guidelines, but from a completely different script, no margin for error there then!

Callcentres- Call and ask for re-issues of all award notices and be told can't do it(even though you're still trying to understand the last batch sent to you for another client). Call MP, MP uses hotline, MP gets back to say hotline says thats no problem- a few mouse clicks,done.

Callcentres- Phone to enquire about a client enquiry made months ago to be told "sorry the screens show your letter received but thats all-I think you'll have to write in again".

etc,etc,

yep!

low quality,
poor efficiency
nil accountability
obstructionist
timewasting
frustrating and alienating.

but saves the staff having their work 'interrupted', right?

should tax credit work be integrated within the inland revenue, and accessible through the local tax office network, or have a grafted- on 'untouchable' status?

excellent news about an Ombudsman's special report, and recognition of something inherently wrong in the system. it would be nice to be prepared when the brown stuff really hits the fan -

I'm with you about the Ombudsman having a look-see, God knows someone needs to and its long overdue. He might get a few ideas from reading the Australian Ombudsman report on Family Credit. Here's a taster-

"There has been a relatively high incidence of debts arising from the end of year income reconciliation process where fortnightly payments have been claimed(with the level of debt being relatively high in many cases). Some level of end -of-year adjustment is unavoidable under the family tax benefit system, given that payments during the year are based on a forecast of income. Our complaints also suggest that deficiencies in the clarity and availability of information and the approach taken to income changes notified during the year have increased the incidence and level of debts" (para 37)

Then have a looksie at the Section on "Debt Recovery Issues" at para 96 onwards

"99. The immediacy of this measure, in that the overpayment and debt recovery occur as a single process, meant that, in many cases, families were not aware of or informed of any overpayment prior to recovery action being taken

100. As many overpayments result from the design of the system, including many that cannot be anticipated or avoided by families, it is appropriate that provisions and procedures for the recovery of such debts should be different to those applying for other Centrelink debts"

It all sounds depressingly familiar. Dated Feb 2003 the report would appear to advocate something called "Progressive Reconciliation Approach" which in effect is equivalent to in-year recovery.

I always thought that Tax Credits were based on Australian and Canadian models. If thats true shouldn't someone have been paying a bit more attention to the b****y problems those systems were already experiencing.


http://www.comb.gov.au/publications_information/Special_Reports/family_assistance_2003feb.pdf

interesting.

maybe our in - year recovery problems result from them paying attention to the Oz problems of inability to make in-year adjustments? one extreme to another?

also interesting that australian social security official errors are waived if they were received in good faith and the person did nothing to cause the overpayment in most weeks.

the additional condition put on to the tax benefit is that repayment would cause severe hardship, and the ombudsman slams that as 'harsh and unreasonable.'

so if our bunch has looked at the aussie system, may one assume they knew exactly what they were doing?

there's another way of looking at official error overpayments than the hardship caused by recovery, and that is the power it gives to statutory authorities to do their job with insufficient care or even recklessly, whereas fair official error rules are a useful check and balance on the system. you should know you're in trouble when overpayments are inevitable within the system devised,(identified by the australian ombudsman) and instead of troubling to design a scheme that works, the state just gives itself the power to recover any loses caused by its failures, regardless of fairness,so that's all right then.

put in the context of economic and social policy, there's a whiff of totalitarianism about it all...i'm sure our ombudsman will manage to confine her report to the tax credit system, because she will have to, but all the same...

there are human rights issues - people on low incomes have a real important need to know what their income is going to be so that they can budget and make choices- and although unexpected changes of circs can strike at any time, a state run system shouldn't operate like like the fickle finger of fate, and hit you out of the blue with a recovery notification for an overpayment, or send you half a dozen revised and incomprehensible notices at a time. why didn't they think about that?

jj

Are you just trying to make us all depressed or what jj??? He sayeth sooth and all that but need he say it in the first place if it's gonna just make me miserable?

I had a policy with tax credits (now been amended with a new first step of, do the calcs and compare, simple, but clarifies most problems very well), which was, don't dawdle, don't think too much, work out a plan, and crack on with it.

So jj, what's your plan?

ah, andrew, trust you to put your finger on the flaw...

besides trying to get re-enfranchised?


same as usual - get the evidence, work out the arguments, present wherever possible with as many joined voices as possible in case 'they' are hard of hearing, keep on trucking...

throw peanuts at the chimp's paper crown...

devise a pantomime...?




jj

How did we so easily get disenfranchised is what I want to know.

I was so happy on that day in 1997, but then they were cheering on the streets of Berlin in 1933 after an election there too weren't they?

me too andrew.

maybe we, like they, took too much for granted.

when 'social inclusion' means guaranteeing people's social security benefit to money lenders, we must have entered the 'let them eat cake!' zone.

the gordon of old would have outlawed loan sharks!!!!

and supported, modernized even, credit unions. maybe he's been running around with that Prudence one, and keeping bad company (bunch of bankers) for too long?

i wonder if he even considered scrapping the export credit guarantee department and using the billions given to BAe and other aristo paragons of virility, to increase IS by more than an insulting 55 sous, so the puir don't need to borrow money to pay for yesterday's jam or tomorrow's pie in the sky.

once mad arrogance has set in, i think a national humming of 'who do you think you're kidding mr hitler' is too subtle to work, even if it were taken up by elderly parliamentary ushers.

a painfully amplified assault by The Who's 'We don't get fooled again', (tony will have a copy, unless he lent it to dubya or toni and they kept it as per)with the erection of a guillotine or two might sober 'em up, and failing that there's the Sex Pistols...

we made it easy for them, andrew...

jj

Who's Next was the first album I, like, really dug, man. Cool.

You know elsewhere with all of this Australian business, isn't it the case that they _did_ look into it really hard and they _did_ learn all of the lessons, and that they really _did_ mean for all of this to happen?

But I think we've learned our lesson too eh?

Guys, you've got it all wrong. It's actually a very clever conspiracy, designed to make the DWP look good, so when they take it all away from IR and give it all back to DWP, we are suitably grateful, and praise Prime Minister Brown to the heavens. You read it here first!

Other way round unfortunately. When all the DWP stuff goes to the Inland Revenue we'll be so beaten down we won't be able to care.

Or if we do, they'll take our identity cards off us and shoot us anyway.