Who will be affected?

New claims

Waived and deferred interviews

Personal advisers

The interview requirement

Work focus

Access to interviews

Repeat interviews

Failure to take part in an interview

Sanctions

Appeal rights

Timeframe and pilots

Clause 52 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill, which is currently in its passage through Parliament (Bulletin 149, p7), creates the statutory framework for the ‘Single Work-Focused Gateway’. The new Act will create a range of powers to compel non-jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) claimants to take part in ‘work-focused interviews’ with personal advisers. The gateway was described briefly in Bulletins 148, p9 and 149, p8. Here, Duleep Allirajah takes a closer look, and reports on the Government’s explanation of how the process is intended to work.

Who will be affected?

The requirement to attend a work-focused interview will apply to everyone who makes a new claim for, or is currently receiving, one of the following benefits: income support, housing benefit, council tax benefit, widows’ and bereavement benefits (but not lump sum payments), incapacity benefit, severe disablement allowance and invalid care allowance. Regulations will provide that a person claiming more than one of these benefits will only be required to attend one interview. Participation in an interview will be a condition of benefit entitlement, so failure to participate will result in the new claims being disallowed, or benefit sanctions being applied to existing claimants.

New claims

When someone makes initial contact there will be a Registration and Orientation (R&O) interview to take personal details, issue claim forms and supply the claimant with basic information. The R&O officer will arrange a work-focused interview with a personal adviser, which would normally take place within three days of the initial contact.1 Gateway officials will have the power to waive or defer interviews ‘in prescribed circumstances’ where an interview ‘would not be of assistance to that person’, or ‘would not be appropriate in the circumstances’. Although the work-focused interview will be a condition of benefit entitlement, the officials will have the power to decide a new claim without an interview, where the interview has been either waived or deferred.

Waived and deferred interviews

The Government has indicated that people who are terminally ill, over pension age, or getting HB/CTB while in full-time work, will be exempt from interviews. Interviews should be deferred where a person is ‘recovering from a major operation’; where ‘a lone parent has recently had a baby’; or where ‘someone’s mental illness is such that it would not be appropriate for him or her to have the interview’.2 However, there will no group exemptions for severely disabled people, full-time carers, or people with children under 5. The Government is unwilling to prescribe in regulations all situations where interviews should be waived or deferred. Andrew Smith, the employment minister overseeing the single gateway, has argued that ‘the heart of our policy is to treat people as individuals, not simply as categories’, and that ‘blanket provision’ would result in whole groups of claimants being ‘excluded from the possibility of working in the future’.3 The decision to waive or defer interviews will be left to the discretion of gateway officials. The quality of the training and guidance provided for R&O officers and personal advisers will therefore be crucial in ensuring that these powers are exercised sensitively and appropriately.

Personal advisers

The Government’s aim is to provide claimants with a ‘single point of contact for all their benefit requirements’. This means that the gateway process should be the same whether the claimant makes initial contact with the Benefits Agency, the Employment Service, or a local authority. Personal advisers will be employed by these agencies, as well as by private or voluntary sector organisations contracted to run personal adviser services. Personal advisers will have a ‘general advisory role’, which means there will not be dedicated advisers for particular client groups, eg, lone parents, disabled people, etc.4 Advisers will be expected to ‘link in to and refer the client on to specialist support services where appropriate’. Gateway advisers should not, therefore, replace specialists such as disability employment advisers or disability service teams (formerly PACT teams), but will refer disabled clients for more specialist employment assistance. The Government has said that personal advisers will be executive officer grades, or the nearest non-civil service equivalent, and ‘will work towards NVQ level 3 in guidance’. It is not yet clear what training new advisers will receive. The Government has promised ‘a comprehensive training programme’ and will consult lobby groups on the training design.

The interview requirement

Claimants will be required to actively ‘take part’ in the interview, not just turn up for an appointment with a personal adviser. Non-JSA claimants will not, however, be required to undertake any subsequent jobseeking activities. Regulations will clarify what it means to ‘take part’ in an interview. The Government has said that it would not be sufficient for ‘a person to turn up and sit there, refusing to participate’. In order to satisfy the requirement a claimant will be expected to provide information about:

Work focus

Although the interviews will primarily be ‘work-focused’, personal advisers will also have a broader welfare role. The Government has said that personal advisers will ‘provide access to a range of help and information on work, benefits and services such as childcare’.6 The ability of personal advisers to perform multiple benefit checks and better-off calculations is questionable . The Government has said it wants advisers to provide claimants with ‘personalised calculations to help see what their net income could be if they were in work’, but that this is a ‘long-term intention’.7 What is also unclear is the extent to which personal advisers will be trained to identify unmet welfare needs or make referrals to the appropriate welfare agencies. Andrew Smith has warned against unrealistic expectations, arguing that: ‘It would stretch the claims of what the single gateway could do if the Government supposed that it could take over the functions of a GP, as a gateway to the health system, or the functions of a social worker in relation to other help’.8 The welfare aspect of this advice seems to be limited to referring claimants to relevant agencies where ‘it is apparent to the interviewers … that people are not receiving the wider professional help and support that they need’.

Access to interviews

Work-focused interviews may take place at a range of locations, normally Benefits Agency, Employment Service or local authority premises. The Government has given a commitment that the interview premises will be accessible to people with disabilities. However, interviews may also be held at suitable alternative premises (eg, outreach facilities), and home visits can be conducted when necessary. Decisions on home visits will be made at the discretion of gateway officials at the R&O stage. The Government has given an assurance that ‘People who need help will be able to take someone with them, whether that person be a friend, a parent – an advocate in whatever sense – to help them communicate’. Claimants will not normally be reimbursed travel costs, apart from ‘exceptional circumstances’, such as ‘when a claimant might incur excessive costs in going to the interview’.9

Repeat interviews

Claimants who are in receipt of benefit will be invited to attend repeat interviews either at periodic intervals or at specific ‘trigger points’. The precise ‘trigger points’ will depend on the circumstances of the individual. The Government has suggested a number of examples of possible ‘trigger points’.10 For example, the 5th or 11th birthday of a lone parent’s youngest child may trigger an interview. The ‘trigger points’ for carers could be the dates ‘when their caring duties commenced or ceased’. For other claimants the start or completion of a training course may trigger an interview. People who claim an incapacity benefit will be required to have a gateway interview at the start of their claim. If they subsequently undergo a ‘personal capability assessment’ (which replaces the ‘all-work’ test from 2001), information about their employability will be gathered at the same time as their incapacity for work is assessed. An employability report, which may be from an SEMA doctor, will be sent to a personal adviser, triggering a repeat interview.

Failure to take part in an interview

If a claimant fails to take part in an interview s/he will face benefit sanctions. The Government has said that sanctions will apply ‘in the event of a third failure without good cause to attend an appointment’.11 Regulations may define what constitutes ‘good cause’ for failure to take part in an interview. It is not yet clear how prescriptive the regulations defining ‘good cause’ will be. The Government has suggested that ‘good cause’ would apply if someone were unable to attend due to illness, or if they did not understand that they were required to attend an appointment due to communication or language difficulties.

Sanctions

A new claimant who fails to take part in an interview will have her/his claim disallowed. A person in receipt of benefit, who fails to take part in a deferred interview, will have her/his claim ‘terminated’,12 and will have to make a new claim before benefit is restored. Any other existing benefit recipient, who is called for an interview but fails to take part, will face a benefit reduction. The benefit sanctions will only apply to benefits covered by the gateway requirement. Regulations will specify how the reduction will be calculated and applied.13 Where the amount of a reduction is greater than the claimant’s entitlement the intention is to leave claimants with ‘a nominal amount’ of benefit to prevent loss of passported benefits. Where someone is claiming several benefits, regulations will provide for the reduction to be spread across more than one benefit. Regulations will prioritise which benefits the reduction should apply to first. The Government has suggested that sanctions should be applied last to HB, because it is designed to meet essential housing costs. The benefit reduction will only apply until a claimant complies with the interview requirement. However, any benefit which has been stopped during the interim period will not be refunded to the claimant.14

Appeal rights

A claimant will have the right to appeal against a decision that:

The same right of appeal to an independent tribunal will apply to a decision made by ‘designated authorities’ in any gateway agencies. This means that decisions made by local authority employees can be appealed, despite the fact that HB/CTB decisions do not normally carry the right of appeal to a tribunal.

Timeframe and pilots

The compulsory interview requirement will apply to all claimants from April 2000. The Government will be starting up a number of single gateway pilots this year. All benefit claimants in a pilot area, who are not in full-time work, will be invited to attend gateway interviews. Initially, participation in a work-focused interview will not be compulsory in the pilots. However, once the Bill becomes law it is expected that the interviews will become compulsory in the pilot areas.

All the gateway pilots will be subject to evaluation. The pilots are scheduled to run up to 2002, and final evaluation reports will be published after the pilots have ended. However, preliminary findings are expected to be available around the end of 1999 for the basic model, summer 2000 for the two variant models.

References