Contract cock-up

[YELLOW]

Quote:

Little Miss Urchin said:
...plus and extra £200!!!

Grrr....

Was that a gross recovery or something?

Can't be any worse than the muppets who work for my payroll in Newcastle who made a right botch of my temporary contract and then when I was made permanant, took over a year to send me my permanent contract!! <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

[vienna1964]

Being officially long-term temporarily "disabled" due to my unfortunate r.t.a 16½ months past and seemingly unable to get any sensible treatment from the N.H.S.- I am unfortunately reliant upon payments from such places as Disability Benefit, Family Tax Credit & so forth.

 

Whilst I have to commend the authorities for creating a benefit system which actually allows a person in my own "stricken" circumstances to survive reasonably well - with the belt pulled firmly in - I have to say that they really need to "get their ducks in a row" in some respects !

 

Unfortunately, I have two children with quite comprehensive learning difficulties (one severe and the other not quite so bad), which qualifies for a further benefit called "Disability Living Allowance", primarily aimed at attending to the extra costs involved with their nurture.

 

Receipt of this D.L.A. within certain strictures, also affects the amount of Family Tax Credit one receives. Both sets of D.L.A. which we receive should "boost" the F.T.C thereby.

 

OK... that is the (arcane) background to the payments - all good and well so far.

 

When my daughter's D.L.A. was reviewed upon the occasion of her 5th. birthday in October, the D.L.A. folks accidentally re-rated her onto a scale which would disqualify her from being qualified for the F.T.C "boost" referred to above.

 

Whilst it was immediately acknowledged that this was an error on the part of the D.L.A. people - like a good boy, I promptly informed the F.T.C. authorities of this "change in circumstances" and they had no alternative but to cut the F.T.C payments we were in receipt of - until such time as the D.L.A. error could be corrected.

 

Complicating matters somewhat were the facts that my daughter's award should also have been incremented due to a further additional criterion which she passed upon her 5th. birthday as well as the fact that my son's award became operative from the end of November.

 

In November, I informed D.L.A. of my son's qualification and soon thereafter payments were incremented to take this into account and F.T.C. obliged thereafter... however, there was still no movement in respect of the error about my daughter's award.

 

I waited patiently through December and then January and still there was no resolution to this problem. On January 31st. (and on several occasions since) I contacted the D.L.A. offices and asked exactly what was happening to my daughter's claim - to be advised that when they had tried to process the altered details through their computer, it had not been able to give indication of the correct award necessary !!! In other words, there is a "bug" in the programme used to calculate these awards ! This also ricochets onto our F.T.C. award, keeping it on it's reduced schedule until such time as the D.L.A. people can solve their problem !

Back in January, D.L.A. advised me that our newly adjusted claim was "in a queue" being referred to some inner sanctum office whereby I gather that it will be worked out manually... It is April 30th today and there is still no movement from that january 31st. position !

 

Luckily, we are able to manage on the amount of current benefits which we receive, if we are very careful - but I have roughly calculated that the total "missing" amounts we should have received, between the D.L.A. & F.T.C. authorities is somewhere in the region of £70-£100 per week, backdated to my daughter's birthday on October 17th. !!! That is 23 weeks and counting !!!

 

So, you can do the mathematics... I am just concerned that someone within one of these authorities will turn around and say that we are only able to back-claim for a certain reduced period of time, although any delays occurring are plainly not our fault... and wave goodbye to a thousand quid or so which should legitimately have been ours.

 

I continue to nervously await the outcome of all these shenannigans - particularly concerned that we are about to pass the end of another tax-year and assuming that the D.L.A. will be further unable to process any changes due to the claim in respect of entering the new tax year.