Listening to Vivaldi waiting for my call to be picked up by a human at the benefits centre while watching the seconds tick away…. Automated voice tells me that “all the advisers are talking to customers and if I prefer I can phone back later”… Is that ever a good time to phone the benefit office (possibly dead on 8am)? Eventually a voice responds. I tell them that I have received a letter this morning informing me that I qualify for contribution based Job Seekers Allowance and was wondering when I would be paid. After the usual security questions I was told that when I signed on last week it hadn’t been properly inputted on their system therefore I needed to contact the Jobcentre. Did I was told….. quicker response in answering the phone but sheer confusion.
Indeed they inputted the last signing on date on my record but when I asked about a “fast track payment” I was told, “We don’t deal with that as we are only a smallJobcentre”. Told to ring the the benefits centre. More Vivaldi. More waiting. Eventually got through and the date of my last signing on had been dutifully inputted. I told the adviser that Jobcentre didn’t deal with fast track payments. I could hear a sharp intake of breath, then a sigh and a suppressed laugh, “It is their responsibility”! They made a note on my record and told me to …… yes, you can guess, to ring the Jobcentre. Spending over an hour on the phone losing the will live…. I duly rang the number and spoke to someone who took my details and yes……
“It’s the benefit centre responsibility for payment”..
Me: “I am confused myself as I gone around in circles and being told so much misinformation”
Them: “Sorry about that but it is their responsibility”
Me: “Well, who deals with the fast track payment”?
Them: “Payment department”
Me: “OK, will I be paid then”
Them: “I will pass the information onto the department. Give me a phone number where they can contact you in the next 3 hours”
My head hurt as it felt like being bounced backwards and forwards, from pillar to post and none the wiser! About an hour later I got a phone from the payment department.
“Yes, you will be paid in the next couple of hours. Unfortunately, Jobcentre was bloody late in inputting your last signing on date. Sorry about that”…
Indeed they paid me. But what a palaver. What bureaucracy. Nobody taking responsibility in paying me. The advisers were polite and helpful but nobody could specifically tell who the hell was meant to be dealing with this.
There will come a time when even this awful service will look like a golden age, the way things are going.
In the United Kingdom benefit claimants are considered to be guilty of attempted fraud unless proven innocent. In the Netherlands the reverse is true. In Holland if you lose your job and need temporary help from the state you fill in a form and get the help more or less immediately (70% of whatever your last wage was). If it turns out that you got the money by deception or mistake you simply pay said money back when you can.
In many European countries the state tries its best to help you when you are in need.
In the United Kingdom the state tries to punish you when you are in need.
Spot-on Ian
…and by doing so they make it more difficult to find work.
Of course people have a better chance of finding work if they are supported and encourage by helpful and friendly people rather than just being bullied by the likes of Grayling and Bunkum Smith.
I sense a certain amount of revisionism here. I was on the dole on and off in the late 90s to mid 2000s in a number of different London boroughs – the service has always been hit and miss. In the Brixton end of Lambeth my housing benefit forms were continually misprocessed for about three months – and it was only some years later that I found out that I had been eligible for emergency payments as I had been facing eviction. The people at the benefit office didn’t tell me. In Richmond I was found a ‘temporary’ job – which turned out to be a rolling temporary contract that paid minimum wage with a weeks notice that the employers envisaged lasting ‘at least two years’. By contrast, Kingston were helpful and supportive as were the Streatham end of Lambeth.
The problems are around the staff – some of whom are excellent, many of whom are rubbish and unsuited to their role. The benefits system is, broadly speaking, fairly sympathetic in theory – there will normally be some sort of recourse to avoid genuine hardship. In practice, many job centre staff won’t bother to find out how to help their clients who fall between the gaps and will just shrug their shoulders with a ‘computer says no’ brush off. This isn’t about cuts or about training – this is about not bothering to do anything more than the bare minimum in a role. Politicians might not be helping this, but to hang the failings of the delivery of the benefits system on the political class is a convenient fiction, which avoids the grim reality that the reason claiming benefits is often painful is that the staff are often shit.