Redundancy payment and Carer's allowance.

[bowlingbun]

Parsifal,
I was giving a factual account of what actually happened and what the DWP actually said to me, when handling my son's claim for IS. Your experience may be different from mine, both may be different from DWP guidelines. Whether or not my experience complies entirely with DWP policies is irrelevant here. This issue cannot be resolved until the DWP get the facts on a completed claim form. The facts remain the same. What matters here is the interpretation of the facts by a DWP adviser - it seems that there may be some problems about interpretation. I have not in any way, shape or form, given any advice or made any comment about this. I, and probably many others too, will be interested to know how this claim progresses.

[bowlingbun]

Parsifal,
I was still writing my response to your first comment when you made the second point, re change of circumstances. In my son's case, absolutely NOTHING had changed apart from a change of address. Everything else remained the same. Nevertheless, the DWP completely mucked up the claim. His benefits were stopped entirely for 3 months whilst they sorted it all out. Fortunately, I've always saved a few pounds each week for him, so he had some savings to fall back on. Endless forms went backwards and forwards because the DWP didn't understand their own system or their own rules. Under these circumstances, I think it's actually helpful to share individual experiences.

[GeorgeT]

bowlingbun

Yes, that is what is happening to my wife. The man at the DHSS said it would be three months wait and stoppage of my wife`s carer`s allowance.

[Guest]

I think that your second post, bowlingbun, shows how important it is to get advice and, on occasion, ask the DWP for the legal basis and specific regulation which they are using to handle a claim or notification in a certain way, not infrequently there is no legal basis for their actions and establishing this fact can save a lot of extra work and stress.

I also think that anyone who has dealt with the DWP over a number of years will agree that having to deal with call centres rather than the decision maker handling the claim has resulted in a deterioration in the service which, where benefits are the only source of income, can cause immense problems for some claimants and that the problem is growing as the previous and this government reduce the size of the DWP workforce. I personally feel that the 12 weeks that is now routinely quoted by some DWP departments for processing a claim or change of circumstances is unacceptable but clearly ministers think otherwise, they should perhaps try living on air.