Jobcentre staff broke the rules ‘to hit targets for forcing people off benefits’
JobCentre staff were told to force people off benefits.
Posted without comment, other than that the full news report – and the NAO report – are worth reading.
Jobcentre staff were told to meet targets for getting people off benefits by using “aggressive” tactics and breaking the rules, it has been claimed.
The shock allegations appear in a report on claimants who were taken off jobseekers’ allowance – only to be slipped cash from another fund to plug the gap.
Two Jobcentre workers were sacked in 2013 for misusing the Flexible Support Fund, designed for travel, childcare and clothes, to make up for five claimants’ lost benefits.
The Department for Work and Pensions said the employees in Plaistow, east London, were an exception and a review of 1,834 cases found little other misuse of the fund.
But the two workers said they behaved the way they did because “managers encouraged aggressive approaches” to meet targets, “including falsely signing claimants off benefits and using the Fund to cover gaps”, the National Audit Office report reveals.
Source: Jobcentre staff broke the rules ‘to hit targets for forcing people off benefits’ – Mirror Online
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IDS, Crabb, Patel and all the DWP staff, including jobcentre staff who did this should be held accountable and punished!
No! Really?
So essentially the 2 former staff members felt that the ‘reformed’ sanctions policy was leaving claimants in extreme hardship & tried to help them financially via other funds available?
Yeah, sack `em: how DARE they react like human beings!
Compassion obviously does not have a place at the DWP/JCP…
This really does stink, with echos of the Thatcher.gov encouraging jobless to reduce the register by signing on sick instead, a tactic yet to be repeated! These instructions come from above, there is no excuse for enacting them, but those in the chain of command should be brought to book for this, and other, reprehensible behavior. Another example to support the UN dossier.
They won’t repeat the ‘signing on sick’ dodge as they are trying to reduce the number of people on sickness benefits (mostly by driving them to their deaths).
Thatcher did do that, bung a load of people on the sick to make her and the dole figures look good, now they’re trying to get the sick numbers down, then in a few years time, unemployment will be through the roof again and will transfer people off the dole and onto the sick, and so it goes round and around again! If the JC broke the law then they should be punished.
Don’t bank on it Mike, as policies fail, they will just divert emphasis to other lines. Deception & changing boundaries / goalposts is a favorite trick of these people. The headlines will soon read, Mission accomplished, welfare down 40%, book closed, then convert jobless to welfare and claim the same again.