DLA some movement

[Tony F Dordogne]

I'm fine with all the DR and Grecophile have said.

So, I'll fill in my form today and then get it in the post in the next few days, amended and with a covering letter reminding Wendy Kettle that she told me last June (incorrectly) that my file had been destroyed etc etc and asking for reinstatement rather than this being a new claim.

And that they write back to confirm  all of the above and then a statement of reason for their decision, pro or con!

Thought I'd left all this sort of thing back in the Uk, it's 25 years plus since I ran a welfare rights team in London and I just feel (a) knackered with the whole thing, and (b) increasingly p****d off with the ExpoTeam's lies and attempts at reasoning - and where do the DLA get their lawyers from, Lawyers 4 U? 

[dragonrouge]

That is a good piece of work and I absolutely support it.

[grecophile-2008]

Well done Tina for condensing out thoughts and once again many thanks dragonrouge for pointing us in the right direction. Don't forget the maladministration claim against the DLA once this has all been sorted out. Keep receipts, log phonecalls, travel expenses, postal costs........

[grecophile-2008]

Hi Tina,

I thought the readers of the forum would like to know what the DLA's mission statement is regarding the treatment of its customers. Perhaps the exportability team should be reminded of this. The underlining is mine.

DWP Guide to Financial Redress for Maladministration

Foreword

The Government's aim is to promote opportunity and independence for all. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has a crucial role to play on this:

• we touch on virtually everyone's life at some point, more than any other department
• our objectives go to the heart of opportunity and independence: more people in work, better support to those who cannot work, ending child poverty, and promoting security and independence in retirement.

In support of this and in their work each day, staff throughout the Department are engaged in supporting the financial needs of millions of people. We are committed to giving a high quality service to all our customers and that includes handling people and their complaints with consideration and fairness. Sadly, in handling so many claims it is perhaps inevitable that sometimes things will go wrong and when that happens we should seek to provide early corrective action together with proper apologies.

Everyone in the Department needs to contribute to handling complaints effectively; learning lessons from them and improving performance. Nipping complaints in the bud together with appropriate apologies will often be sufficient, but this guide describes when we should go further and offer some tangible redress.

Over the years we have developed a scheme for financial redress and the Parliamentary Ombudsman and her predecessors have accepted its scope. This revised guide describes that scheme and supersedes the guidance issued in March 2001. It gives further amplification to some of the issues that have caused doubt in the past and should be used with immediate effect. The breadth of the Department's work is huge and any guidance can only hope to cover the most common situations. This guide is no exception and if staff are in doubt as to whether some financial redress should be made they should seek advice from Agency Special Payment Teams or DWP Viewpoint at an early stage.

Our aim is simple. We should try to give a good service to all those we deal with in our official duties. As part of that, if we make errors we owe it to our customers to apologise and do all we can to restore them to where they should have been in the first place. In this way our customers will receive the service which Parliament intended.

PAUL GRAY
Consumer Champion
Department for Work and Pensions

 

[barebackrider]

Pure gold!

BBR

[Russethouse]

 Isn't this the key : In this way our customers will receive the service which Parliament intended.

Surely what Parliament intended was what was in place before the European court ruled ?

How likely do you all think it is that this is going to get settled while this government is in office ?

[NormanH]

[quote user="Russethouse"]

 Isn't this the key : In this way our customers will receive the service which Parliament intended.

Surely what Parliament intended was what was in place before the European court ruled ?

How likely do you all think it is that this is going to get settled while this government is in office ?

[/quote]

Well a lot quicker than if the Conservatives get in and cut all allowances..

[NormanH]

[quote user="Russethouse"]

 Isn't this the key : In this way our customers will receive the service which Parliament intended.

Surely what Parliament intended was what was in place before the European court ruled ?

How likely do you all think it is that this is going to get settled while this government is in office ?

[/quote]

Well a lot quicker than if the Conservatives get in and cut all allowances..

[woolybanana]

Normie baby that is ollox and you know it.

[Ron Avery]

 WBB wrote " Normie baby that is ollox and you know it.

Is it woolie, and you would know how???  Just watch IB and other job seeking related allowances for those living outside the UK disappear from the day after the next election.  Shouldn't bother you though WB  you have long told us all the teachers claiming IB here are fakes and fraudsters, not to mention civil servants....[Www]

[Russethouse]

 What the next government will do is not the question is it ? Will this Government fight tooth and nail to avoid the  poor publicity associated with sending millions of pounds abroad when the recipients are unlikely to spend their disposable income to benefit the UK ?

[woolybanana]

I seem to remember it is already built into this government's plans for IB. Look at it logically - if people are reassessed on on the basis of what percentage of a job they can do, then they will have to be available for work in case just such a job comes up, and being as far away as France would make them ineligible.

[Benjamin]

[quote user="Russethouse"] What the next government will do is not the question is it ? Will this Government fight tooth and nail to avoid the  poor publicity associated with sending millions of pounds abroad when the recipients are unlikely to spend their disposable income to benefit the UK ?[/quote]

Including State Retirement Pensions to end for those not UK resident?

[Russethouse]

 What am I talking about is back payments..... I have no idea what any political party has planned but I think it would be unrealistic to pretend that if some claims are backdated up to ten years in some cases, there may not be comment or negative publicity associated with those payments for which ever government is in power...

 Are delaying tactics being used ?

[woolybanana]

[quote user="Benjamin"][quote user="Russethouse"] What the next government will do is not the question is it ? Will this Government fight tooth and nail to avoid the  poor publicity associated with sending millions of pounds abroad when the recipients are unlikely to spend their disposable income to benefit the UK ?[/quote]


Including State Retirement Pensions to end for those not UK resident?



[/quote]

Frankly Benjamin I dont trust them any further than I can throw a lorry load of illegal booze. Though I think that the basic State pension is protected under European law. They are desperate to hang onto their four homes plus patio heaters for as long as possible because the City ain't going to be offering them lucrative directorships after the way they have slagged them off.

[Ron Avery]

[quote user="Russethouse"] What the next government will do is not the question is it ? Will this Government fight tooth and nail to avoid the  poor publicity associated with sending millions of pounds abroad when the recipients are unlikely to spend their disposable income to benefit the UK ?[/quote]

What  poor publicity?  I thought that the fact that the great British public donated £57 million for famine and AIDS relief in Africa through Comic Relief was quite well publicised in the UK.  Are you saying that UK government aid to poorer countries should stop or just be better publicised?

[woolybanana]

Just as MP's are being taken to task for doing what is legal, so will the Govt be taken to task when it is shown that the Costa Britta and Anglais Aveyron are full of wealthy Brit pensioners or IB holders who live off the old G n T budget and do not pay tax in UK.

This Govt will get increasingly desperate as the election approaches and will try anything to hold on to office.

[grecophile-2008]

I had hoped the forum would act as a sounding block for intelligent, rational debate and not degenerate into a squabble over political views.

Some people will inevitably use the system to get benefits fraudulently and we leave the law to deal with them. What this link was trying to do was to raise awareness to the fact that the UK government was told by the ECJ they had made an error of law 17 years ago which affected the more vulnerable in society. The benefits in question are designed to help the claimants live a normal life, not to give them anything more than others who are not in need of care. Invariably the burden of care falls on the family members who do it out of love -I personally gave up a very high powered job in order to care for my husband as my only other option was to put him in a home or hospital. Both my husband and myself have paid into the system for many years. My objection is that we have to battle with the governments agencies, no matter what the political hue at the time, in order to get them to administer the laws handed down to them in a competent and fair manner.

Try debating under a different link from the DLA forum as those who are trying to battle through the system might prefer to read comments relating to the issues affecting them and not the banter being exhibited now.

[woolybanana]

What a snotty post. Your lectures are not needed thank you.

There have been 37 pages of this, mostly relevant, sometimes concerned. The issue raises its head when someone is able to report something new which does not seem to be every day. Then it is discussed as appropriate. In the meantime it is occasionally thrown about in more general terms.

[Tony F Dordogne]

Sorry folks, we don't want this to degenerate into a squabble as in 36 pages (excluding this one) we've managed to leave the politics out of things and concentrate on the real issue, without the thread wandering all over the place.

Grecophile, Woolybanana has been a user on this place for many years and we all know him well.  Woolybanana, Grecophile has provided some very useful information - as you've pbviosly read - in the short time that she's been among us and she obviously has very strong views, probably prompted by the shabby way that she's been treated, not by politicians but by their civil servants - and lawyers!.

Please guys, we've got enough on our plates trying to get the civil servants to do what they're supposed to do without any distractions or animosities which - thus far - we've managed to avoid and which have been discussed elsewhere at some length. 

[woolybanana]

Tony, I couldn't agree more, but in my heart I feel that the delays are being 'imposed' from the very top, for reasons I don't necessarily understand. The wandering, which did take place, was really concerning the issue of 'why'.

[Russethouse]

At least someone gets it ![Www]

I suspect the misinformation and confusion may be part of a bigger picture to delay making these payments during this parliament. I'm not squabling about the party politics - isn't this an important part of the bigger picture too ?

FWIW I'm in the UK and like others here probably can guess at how paying out this money at this time, rightly or wrongly  would be received in the media, and the reaction 

[Tony F Dordogne]

But Russethouse, it doesn't matter what the reaction in the UK is, unless you're a Labour politician.  WE don't care.  I wasn't bothered that I had to surrender DLA until October 2007 and now I bloody well am, because the European CJ said that the UK government broke the law when they stopped tha DLA payments.  I've said several times on here over the years that those people who use any benefit payment as part of their 'move to France' budget are treading on dangerous ground but if a benefit I received in the UK was supposed to have been paid, then fair enough.  As far as J and I are concerned, it's a welcome extra but nothing that we're writing into our household budget on a long-term basis.

But to be honest, with all the other crap that's flying about at the moment, the DLA issue is small beer and unless somebody uses it as a bandwagon - the Tories and Lib Dems want the benefit paid to give them another stick to beat the government with and Labour certainly aren't making a fuss about it, unless some arseh**e like Jeremy Clarkson or that Littlejohn guy decides to run a two day campaign on it, I don't think it's at all an issue politically.

What is interesting is that when a few radio etc articles have been run on this, nobody has taken it up, except politicians who want to use it for their own ends.

And with the MPs expenses row going on, I think that many of those who really have their faces in the trough may be somewhat pre-occupied.

And no, this wasn't part of the bigger picture, this row started in 1999, the 2007 decision was the final hearing so the UK government had AGES and AGES to get all this sorted out. 

[Russethouse]

[quote user="Tony F Dordogne"]

But Russethouse, it doesn't matter what the reaction in the UK is, unless you're a Labour politician.  WE don't care. 

You may not, and I don't blame you for that, but most of the voters live in the UK (quelle surprise) The government are not going to want yet another bout of negative reporting esp about money going abroad to people who have chosen to move. We are in such a pickle here that Save the Children has launched a grant scheme to help some families.

 I wasn't bothered that I had to surrender DLA until October 2007 and now I bloody well am, because the European CJ said that the UK government broke the law when they stopped tha DLA payments.  I've said several times on here over the years that those people who use any benefit payment as part of their 'move to France' budget are treading on dangerous ground but if a benefit I received in the UK was supposed to have been paid, then fair enough.  As far as J and I are concerned, it's a welcome extra but nothing that we're writing into our household budget on a long-term basis.

But to be honest, with all the other crap that's flying about at the moment, the DLA issue is small beer and unless somebody uses it as a bandwagon - the Tories and Lib Dems want the benefit paid to give them another stick to beat the government with and Labour certainly aren't making a fuss about it, unless some arseh**e like Jeremy Clarkson or that Littlejohn guy decides to run a two day campaign on it, I don't think it's at all an issue politically.

Then with all due respect I suspect you are a little out of touch with the atmosphere in the UK at present, you may think it's a little thing and small beer, but that's not how it would be perceived in the media, is it?

What is interesting is that when a few radio etc articles have been run on this, nobody has taken it up, except politicians who want to use it for their own ends.

And with the MPs expenses row going on, I think that many of those who really have their faces in the trough may be somewhat pre-occupied.

And no, this wasn't part of the bigger picture, this row started in 1999, the 2007 decision was the final hearing so the UK government had AGES and AGES to get all this sorted out. 

But they didn't, they argued the case, I guess they thought they would win, if you think they are going to pay out now without metaphorically kicking and screaming every inch of the way I suspect you are wrong

All I'm saying is please look at the wider picture, whether you are entitled to the benefit or not might not be the only driver for when these monies are paid.

[/quote]

[Russethouse]

 

Fortunately (or in the case of those affected, unfortunately) the UK media have absolutely no interest at all in this story. No story, no reaction [;-)]

Until the money is actuall paid !!!