Category: Uncategorized

The Sanctions Double Whammy

Sanctions. It’s the word most associated with the benefits system.

A sanction is a financial penalty imposed on a claimant for not doing something they should have (or vice versa). Amongst the offences are an inadequate work search, not attending training arranged by a work coach, leaving a job without a good reason or failing to apply for a vacancy.

However, the most widespread sanction is for failing to attend a mandatory appointment at the job centre or FTA for short. Such a sanction starts on the day of failure and ends the day before a new appointment is arranged, provided that appointment is attended. Days are added to the length of the sanction depending on whether one of the same type has occurred in the last 12 months.

7 days for no other sanctions.
14 days for one previous sanction.
28 days for more than one previous sanction.

Example 1: An appointment is missed on 2nd April. The new appointment is made on 7th April and attended on 10th April. Claimant has no prior offences.

The length of the sanction is 5 + 7 = 12 days.

Example 2: The same as example 1, but the claimant has two sanctions of the same type in the last 12 months.

The length of the sanction is 5 + 28 = 33 days.

For a claimant over 25, £10.40 is deducted from the standard allowance of £317.82 for each day of the sanction. In the second example this wipes out an entire payment in a 31 day month, plus two days of the following month.

Other elements of the benefit, such as payments for children or housing are still paid.

What Do Claimants Without Money Do?

Some use the payment intended for rent, which has obvious consequences. Others apply for a Recoverable Hardship Payment (RHP). The clue is in the title. It has to be paid back. The maximum amount available is sixty percent of the sanctioned portion of benefit. This is worked out on a daily basis starting at the date of application and ending the day before the next normal payment is due.

Repayment of a hardship payment starts in the assessment period when all sanctions have been served. It is taken at forty percent of the standard allowance. Our claimant with an allowance of £317.82 loses £127.13 of it. It’s a double whammy, prolonging the period on reduced benefits.

Claimants often call, wondering why payments haven’t returned to normal now that their sanction has ended. It’s because of the RHP. The method of recovery is explained at the time the hardship payment is made, but the information isn’t always taken in. The prospect of starvation tends to do that to a person.

To apply for a hardship payment, a claimant must have arranged and attended an appointment of the type they missed – known as ‘re-engaging’. Then they need to contact the service centre for a telephone interview with a case manager, which is an exercise in ritual humiliation lasting around twenty minutes. Questions are asked to which the answers are bleeding obvious to anyone with more than half a brain. This obviously excludes Universal Credit policy makers.

The completed questionnaire is referred to a team leader who decides if the payment can be made and calculates the amount. Then it’s passed back to the case manager who rings the claimant with the decision, obtains consent to make the payment and puts it into the system. The team leader has to further approve the transaction.

The process is convoluted, time consuming and unpleasant for the claimant. The case manager isn’t having a good time either. And if the sanction is long enough to carry over to the next month, it all has to be done again.

Next up: The Open Ended Sanction and a Further Twist of the Knife

The Truth About Universal Credit

Universal Credit is always in the news. It’s never good news. Claimants sanctioned, made homeless, even dying in some cases – shortly after being declared fit for work.

There’s certainly spite in the implementation of UC. One need only look at the sanctions regime to see that. But most of the problems are due to a lack of leadership, no forward planning and the sheer cack handed, amateur incompetence of the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP is a lazy, systemically dishonest, make it up as you go along organisation, not fit for any purpose, let alone one that involves huge changes to the benefits system.

Sadly, there are those who have bought into the idea that all benefit claimants are scroungers. Government rhetoric, a rabidly right wing press, welfare porn on TV and the English obsession with finding someone to look down on has seen to that.

The purpose of this blog is not to persuade those people otherwise. Nor is it to highlight individual cases of injustice, many though they are. The object is to show every single tax payer how they are being ripped off. Universal Credit is an expensive, badly organised, error-strewn, easy to defraud shambles.

I am a case manager. That’s the person in the back office who administers claims, as opposed to a work coach seen at the job centre. What’s described here is drawn from my own experiences and those of colleagues across several offices.

Amongst other things we will feature:
– The sanctions double whammy.
– How claimants in work are swindled out of money.
– The Universal Credit child care con.
– Live Service: The original, catastrophic version of UC that should have been the government scandal of the current century. The scrapping of Live Service was announced in 2014. It finally bit the dust in March 2019.

Next up: The Big Journal Lie