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Please include your name, age and location with any submission. Benefit errors 'predominant factor' in mum's death. What are Job Fairs? Job Fairs provide a great opportunity to meet many local employers. What is Pathways to Work? Pathways to Work helps people with disabilities or health conditions that make it difficult for them to find work.
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Findings from parliamentary inquiries and independent agencies continue to highlight these problems. Persistent themes include the complexity and delays of the process to claim benefits, poor communications and reduced options available for face-to-face contact. Claimants with physical or mental health conditions can struggle to navigate the system and do what is required of them.
Others fear the impact of sanctions and of being pressurised to drop benefit claims or to take insecure, low-paid jobs. Mandatory interactions with jobcentres are a source of stress and anxiety for many claimants.
Access to online facilities at jobcentres also remains important for those many claimants who do not have their own computers or internet access, or who may need assistance using such services. Jobcentres will continue to act as a fail-safe when serious or transitional problems with the Universal Credit digital system come to light.
This was illustrated in January , when the Government Digital Service found that about a third of potential claimants were not able to set up and verify their online Universal Credit account and in one jobcentre more than half of claimants needed help with the process.
A month later, it also emerged that Universal Credit claimants who forgot their log-in details had to attend a face-to-face interview at a jobcentre to receive a new password. All this shows that the digital transformation has met with patchy success , particularly amid the complexity of changes to Universal Credit.
Yet still the government is ploughing ahead with plans to close jobcentres. The implications for the jobcentre network emerged slowly in with phased, little-noticed announcements of decisions to close or merge small numbers of local jobcentres.
The PCS, the civil service trade union, was warned, however, that a significant number of jobcentre staff would have to relocate or be at risk of redundancy. This prompted a Westminster Hall debate in parliament followed by a Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry.
MPs and other stakeholders complained of a lack of prior consultation, the absence of rigorous impact assessments and negligible consideration of alternatives. In early , the PCS union launched a national campaign against the closures. It has led protests and strike action in response to particular jobcentre closures, especially in Sheffield and Glasgow where staff argue that their offices provide a vital service in the most deprived parts of each city.
A revised final timetable for jobcentre closures was published in July It said that jobcentres have been, or are to be closed, leaving a final network of some standalone jobcentres, including ten new acquisitions. Most of the closures are taking place in London and the Northwest, with the fewest in Wales and the Northeast. Services from 50 smaller jobcentres are to be co-located in local authority or other community settings.
The DWP published no rationale for the closure of individual jobcentres. It argued simply that the termination of a year private finance initiative estates contract in March enabled it to rationalise the network and vacate underused office space. It said this space had been generated by a decline in staff numbers, the automation of back office processes, the increased use of digital services by claimants, and the reduction in the number of unemployed claimants — which had then fallen from almost 1.
The department committed only to undertake a local consultation where a closure meant that claimants had to travel more than an additional three miles, or for over an additional 20 minutes by public transport from their existing jobcentre.
This meant the views of local claimants and stakeholders were only sought for 28 of the proposed countrywide closures and co-locations. A rapid review of the subsequently published consultations shows claimants raised common concerns about the closures. These included the direct impact on travel times and costs and the possibility of receiving a sanction for not attending a meeting as a result, especially for claimants with disabilities and those caring for young children.
One claimant from the Wirral said:. Another claimant in Southall , said:. An extra couple of bus journeys might not mean anything to someone with a regular income but as anyone who has been living on benefits knows — every penny counts.
While another in Highgate, London said:. I would fear being sanctioned all the time by having to rely on the sometimes unreliable public transport, road works or traffic problems. The DWP responded to each consultation with locally tailored, standard answers. It did acknowledge some difficulties, but in nearly all cases the closures went ahead. The department rejected any suggestion that sanctions might increase following local closures and insisted that claimants would continue to have access to high-quality services in their new jobcentres.
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