Crisis Loans by phone, Sitemap and Press Release.
Loan Ranger is interested to hear about your RECENT experiences of trying
to get through on the helpline to a Crisis Loans Assessor:
- Were you forced to keep re-dialling, how many hours, how many days?
- Have you suffered hardship caused by the extended delay?
- Has the experience caused you severe stress or distress
- If you are impaired, did Jobcentre Plus offer any special help or
alternative to the help line?
Did the ansaphone bottleneck cause you grief you would like to tell me about?
Please contact Loan Ranger and tell me about these or any other problems
you encountered.
I'm writing to draw your attention to a campaign web site (
http://loanranger.no-ip.org/crisis%20loan/
) which, hopefully, will be helpful, informative and a resource for others
in their endeavours to protest for better service from Crisis Loans by telephone.
Given that the Social Fund's original objective of 'providing a flexible
and quick way of providing one-off or emergency payments to help the most
vulnerable in society' is not being achieved, in my opinion it is unlawful
for Government to allow this shocking state of affairs to persist. In fact,
they are forcing people into the hands of Loan Sharks, Pawnbrokers and exploitative
'Second Hand Shops', which is at exact opposites to why Crisis Loans came
into being. Just what the 'dispossessed' are supposedly to do is beyond the
pale.
The problem as I see it now, is that Ministers for the DWP and the Chief
Executive of "Jobcentre Plus" (Jim Murphy M.P., James Plaskitt M.P.
and Ms. Lesley Strathie) prefer to remain in a 'cosy' state of denial in
regards to Crisis Loans by telephone because if the facts were to hit the
fan, none of them would come out of it unscathed.
Todays problem has its origins in 2002 with the roll-out of Jobcentre Plus,
staff cuts under the
'Gershon Review'
and, the introduction of new I.T. and telephony systems, being implemented
simultaneously. It doesn't require a genius to see that the DWP was trying
to do too much, too fast, and to make matters worse, staff training provision
has remained at the previous (average) levels of 6 days per person/year. The
delivery of benefits has been beset by problems and failings ever since. This
is all public knowledge and has been well reported by Committees and The
Press alike.
I would conjecture that, consequently, failures in the timely delivery
of other benefits has caused a very significant increase in clients needing
to apply for alignment loans whilst awaiting payment of their overdue entitlement,
thereby overburdening the system. If the said increase in applications were
to become public knowledge, it could be construed as indicative of wider
dysfunctionality within the operation of Jobcentre Plus benefits
delivery centres as a whole. So, the absence of statistics is advantageous
to the aforementioned three wise monkeys of Westminster and Whitehall. So
here we come to the nub of the story; no statistics, (leads to) no evidence
of a problem, (and therefore) no call for improvements in service delivery.
I intend to change all that starting with the co-ordinated gathering of
statistics and evidence to present to M.P.s and the media.
The reason they use for not giving any statistics pertaining to unanswered
calls is pathetic, "...advanced telephony systems (not yet being in place),
enabling us to monitor telephony performance...", and it should not be accepted
as a reason for them not trying. They just don't have the will to do anything,
but surely anything would be better than nothing.
See my new web site
http://loanranger.no-ip.org/crisis%20loan/
for more.
Sitemap