Independent Case Examiner's investigation failed to fully consider injustice

What happened

ICE investigated Mr P's complaint that his workplace provider had failed to consider his caring responsibilities when making referrals to Jobcentre Plus to consider sanctioning his benefit. ICE also investigated whether Jobcentre Plus failed to take appropriate action to tell Mr P about sanctions to his benefit, and failed to address his complaints. ICE partly upheld Mr P's complaint. ICE found that Jobcentre Plus failed to tell his workplace provider about the restrictions placed on his jobseeker's agreement that showed the specific hours that he was available for work. However, ICE said it expected Mr P to point this out to the workplace provider when it told him to attend mandatory appointments outside those hours. ICE found that the workplace provider acted correctly in sending referrals to Jobcentre Plus when Mr P failed to attend those appointments. ICE said the correct route to challenge sanctions is to ask for a review of the decision or to submit an appeal. ICE considered it was not maladministrative for different decision makers to make different decisions in initially sanctioning Mr P's benefit, but revised that decision when he appealed. ICE found that Jobcentre Plus had correctly disallowed Mr P's benefit when he refused to sign a new jobseeker's agreement.

ICE considered Jobcentre Plus had handled Mr P's complaint poorly. It recommended that Jobcentre Plus apologise for its failings. It did not make any recommendations for redress as it considered the review and appeal process was the correct route for it to challenge Jobcentre Plus's decisions. Mr P was unhappy with ICE's investigation and approached us.

What we found

Although Jobcentre Plus told the workplace provider that there were restrictions on Mr P's jobseeker's allowance agreement, it did not explain that it should only make mandatory appointments for the times that Mr P was available for work. Mr P was not aware that appointments should have been made in accordance with his jobseeker's agreement.

ICE did not fully consider the effects of Jobcentre Plus's poor communication, which resulted in unnecessary referrals and the imposition of sanctions. It was clear that the initial sanction decisions were fundamentally wrong. ICE's investigation was flawed because it reached inappropriate conclusions. This meant that Mr P was put to the trouble of complaining to us, and was left feeling that ICE had dismissed his complaint.

Jobcentre Plus's failure to make it clear that appointments should be made for the times that Mr P was available for work was maladministrative. Furthermore, it had plenty of opportunities to set the record straight, but failed to do so, which lead to more unnecessary referrals and sanctions.

As a result of its actions, Mr P suffered stress, inconvenience and aggravation because his benefit was stopped. He also had a real sense of worry that Jobcentre Plus would needlessly stop his benefits again.

Putting it right

ICE apologised and paid Mr P £150 in recognition of the effect of its failings.

Jobcentre Plus apologised and paid Mr P £500 in recognition of the effect of its failings. It also made a commitment to pay any bank charges Mr P incurred because of its failings. Jobcentre Plus showed us how it will make sure that workplace providers are told about restrictions on an individual's jobseeker's agreement and how those restrictions affect the arrangement of appointments, and so on.