WRITTEN ON February 27th, 2009 BY Paul Smith AND STORED IN Uncategorized

The Department for Work and Pensions is covertly supporting Royal Mail and the Northern Irish economy, my colleagues at Government Computing weekly can reveal.

A colleague’s brother recently signed on for Jobseeker’s Allowance for the first time. Attending Jobcentre Plus as instructed, he was asked to fill in forms to apply for the allowance, housing benefits and help with council tax.

He surprised the staff by asking if he could fill out forms on the spot – the expectation was that he would post them back. He was then told the forms would be posted to Belfast. Someone there might contact him – by post – for further information. That office would then contact his local authority – by post – regarding benefits.

The council concerned has since written, referring throughout the letter to the jobseeker’s brother as Mr Dave (colleague’s first name changed to protect the innocent). As the Jobcentre staffer misspelt the applicant’s occupation after having checked how it was spelt – and he is not a xylophonist – this was not a big surprise.

Read on to find out what our brave jobseeker found out a fortnight later. This news will have presumably been chiselled on a stone tablet by someone in the Falkland Islands.

Loose Wires: The botched bank job

If you are still with us, you will recall that we revealed how Jobcentre Plus’s paper based processes for a new jobseeker seem to be designed to promote the Post Office and the Northern Ireland economy, where the letters are processed.

The good news is that Belfast has called our jobseeker to set up his allowance. It will be transferred straight to his bank account, three weeks after he applied. Nice to see IT entering the process, even at such a late stage.

But his application for linked benefits from his council ran into trouble: it wanted to see three months of bank statements. Unfortunately, our jobseeker made the mistake of moving into the 21st century and getting statements online. The council insists on ones printed by the bank, which supplies these at £5 each.

So someone on Jobseeker’s Allowance of £60.50 a week is meant to spend £15 on bits of paper that any competent forger could run off in a few minutes.

It’s not often you hear the following: well done to the bank concerned. It provided the required paper statements for free.

And this paragon of financial services? NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, majority owned by HM Government.

If you enjoyed this little tale (WIBBI we didn’t all cry), then you’ll find other stories like it at the foot of GC Weekly published every Thursday. Plug over.