Over the last few years we have enjoyed a very good working relationship with our local pension service, registering as an alternative office (mainly to date stamp AA/DLA which benefits us and our clients) and have a pension 'surgery' in our offices.

We have always been able to telephone our local processing centre to check on Severe disability premiums/carer premiums etc when doing our follow up work with AA/PC/DLA/CA etc and after a suitable check by DWP (that we have relevant details/knowledge of the case etc) they have provided us with assistance.

So when I read the recent Touchbase (March 2007) confirming the DWP comitment to work with partners, I thought great JCP may also join in and actually talk to us when client has left office.

Oh I should not have got so excited as last week, we received a letter from DWP saying that unless a client was with us or they had contacted client to get permission to speak to us they were not going to discuss case with us.

I wonder if other advice agencies have had the same problems, I have challenged this with area manager, but without much success at present.

Does this mean the DWP web site - “Guide for staff working with customers representatives.” has been deleted?

It says on the first page “ this document now replaces the section on Disclosure to representatives in the personal information policy Guide. It can either be read or referred to on its own, or can be used to support staff briefing and training sessions.”

I always quote from the section, Implict consent, when I have problems like you are describing.

Haven't had any problems so far but if we did we'd do what Penny suggests above.

we regularly have problems with authorities, and quoting the guide rarely works becasue front-line staff seem largely unaware of it.

Yep - just rang Seaham pension centre this morning and they point blank refused as client was not with me needed fax of client authority. Fine if you have it - but in this case client needed home visit urgently and we needed to check rate of DLA so appropriate forms could be taken.

Got around it by telephoning local pension service who would release information, but madness!

Quote from CPAG Welfare Rights Bulletin 197;

DWP guidance on dealing with reps.

"Written signed consent should be requested only when consent cannot be established by other means. Implicit consent is defined as where staff use their experience and judgement to satisfy themselves that the caller has consent to act on behalf of the customer. For example, this may apply where the rep has basic information such as NINO, date of birth, etc, and is clearly knowledgeable about the basic facts of the claim and is making enquiries consistant with that of a bona fide rep, such as what stage the claim is at, why a particular decision was made etc."

Obviously the person you were dealing with had no experience or judgement.

Recently had similar problems with the local Benefit Delivery Centre and, after getting a bit frustrated with the front line staff's ignorance of the guidance on "implicit consent", sent a slightly irate letter.
The response stated "I am advised that whilst you have been given guidance on implicit consent it would appear that it has not been as widely publicised to staff, as it has with welfare rights officers. Unfortunately, it would appear that there has been a slight breakdown in communications from those who publish the policy to those who administer the benefits and this is regrettable."
Not so sure that the "slight breakdown" wasn't more of a complete lack of communication.

It seems to be widespread usually with the general response "what guidance??". We've even had a local BDC manager to an advisors meeting and he suggested we ring his assistant to give our details to ensure we could get past this barrier. This was couple months ago and we still have exactly the same problems.

Tue 05-Jun-07 02:00 PM by wba

Just read your email and the various replies.We are an alternative office to the DWP in our area and the local Pension Service will give us any info we want , but the call centre in Burnley will usually only speak to us if the client is present , even though we have been assured they can talk to us as if we are the DWP.Even liaison with the Alternative Office 'Troubleshooter' at Bolton hasn't yealded any results on that score , but I think it is just that the front line staff are unsure of the procedures for talking to an Alternative Office person.So we just ring the local Pension Service and bingo! all our problems are solved.
Jane Wrightson
Welfare Benefits Adviser.

Is it ok if we all use your name then Jane???????

I made a complaint to our District Manager just last week about Burnley Pension Centre and them seemingly having no idea about their own guidance.

Someone from Burnley rang a couple of days later and apologised and said she'd investigate - however she did say that the two people we had spoken to were not "telephone agents" and only answer the phone when they are very busy and probably didn't know about the guideance concerning consent.

Not sure what to make of this as one of the people we spoke to said they'd spoken to a supervisor who maintained they could not provide what we needed as the client wasn't with us - this despite them having a record of written authority and the fact that we were only phoning in response to a letter from them.

Ever feel like throwing your hands up and giving up?

I know how you feel.....I was told by our Contact Centre that the "implied consent" had to be in writing!!

Mmm seems I'm not alone in this frustrating problem. We get all manner of responses. One lady I spoke to at the contact centre yesterday was quite happy to confirm details of Retirement Pension payments. Yet last week they would not speak to me, or contact client to confirm consent.

This causes a real problem when the client is not able to visit our office, we have restrictions on home visiting at present, and if it is an 'emergency' situation then posting consent forms is not possible.

Whilst the local pension service will organise home visits and usually take up queries they are out and about quite a lot of the time, so occasionally we can't contact them straight away.

All in all, quite a mess!

Burnley should be well aware because we have raised it with them at every quarterly liaison meeting we have had with them over the last 2-3 years. We are assured that regular memos are sent round after our complaints and repeat guidance issued. Problems in the past have been made worse by staff getting conflicting instructions (and threats of disciplinary action) from the security (?) teams who have made staff so frightened of releasing information inappropriately that their default position is not to say anything!

The earlier contribution about staff having little judgement or experience hits the nail on the head. It is often the case that the first person you get through to on the phone these days in Pension Centres is new and inexperienced. Many of them are struggling with the basics of Pension Credit so appropriate disclosure of information is not high on their radar.

If we get stonewalled we ask to speak direct to a supervisor. If the supervisor refuses to disclose any info we ask for their name and feed this through in our complaints and at liaison meetings so that the appropriate training/guidance can be targetted. We still get problems but if you are persistent you should get a result of some sort, although it gets very frustrating going through the same arguments time and time again. The more you complain the better known you or your organisation will become (for good or bad) and if they know you are not going to back down and get written authorisation just because they say so then perhaps they'll change their tune. Going through the document on working with customer reps and pointing out the relevant paragraphs also helps in the educative process! (although I don't see why I should be doing their training for them).

I do sympathise with staff working in Pension Centres as a lot of them are new and inexperienced and they seem significantly overstretched with work being shunted around to different parts of the country and new systems being introduced every 5 minutes. That doesn't excuse the Pension Service and in my experience things seem to be getting worse (processing times, getting awards wrong, dealing with changes in circs) which means we are having to ring them up more often to sort things out which makes it even more frustrating when they refuse to talk.

Hi
try this link and quote their own guidance back at them!

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/advisers/repsguide.pdf

Sandra - we do, it makes no bliddy difference! Most of the staff don't seem to know this guidance even exsists.