Hello, I got a phone call at work last night from my distraught mother telling me that one of our lovely neighbors had contacted the local council housing officer to complain that she has been exposing herself to one of the local children. The council worker phoned my mums doctor who then phoned my mum up. We have contacted the police over the malicious complaint and they are coming around later today, and apparently the doctor is going to phone back later as she wants to talk to me as well. I was wondering though, are the council allowed to contact my mums doctor behind her back? The story is a pack of lies so there obviously isn't any evidence for any wrong doing - they are just acting on the word of my vindictive neighbor.

My employer has recently signed-up with the local work programme provider and as a result we have had a large influx of people on work placement join us (there are now more work placement people here than paid staff). What's really worrying is that it has only been a couple of weeks and there are already rumors that management are considering getting rid of the part-time staff.

Thanks for the link. According to that I am not a casual worker as I work the same fixed days every week (we agreed on the days before I started work). Nope, none of the staff have ever had a written statement.

Hello, I've been working for my current employer for just over a year now - most of that time has been spent working 16 hours per week, but for the last two month I have been working anywhere between 24 and 40 hours per week. I have never been offered a written contract and my employer has always maintained that I am not entitled to any paid holidays as he considers me to be a casual worker who only works part-time. Looking over the government website though it seems that even when I was only working 16 hours per week I should be entitled to some days off. Would this be correct?

Thanks for the advice, I will go down to the council and see what they say.

Hello, sorry if this is the wrong forum but I wasn't sure where to post it. My dad has been very ill for the past few months and he is starting to worry about what will happen to me and my mum in regards to our council flat after he dies. We have lived here together for 12 years and the tenancy is in his name alone. My mum is 76 and not really up to the responsibility of taking over the tenancy and if anything happened to her as well I would have to leave, so we have agreed that I should try and get the flat transferred to me. From looking through our tenants handbook it seems that there are two options open to us - a tenancy transfer which happens whilst my dad is still with us, or a tenancy succession which happens after he dies. The handbook doesn't provide much information for either option so I was wondering what would be the best course to try and take? Thanks.

I've never tried this so I don't know if it would work, but when you contact employers can't you add a brief statement forbidding them from sharing any of your personal information with a third party? If the employer isn't allowed share the information then it doesn't matter if your provider contacts them or not. Whenever I get an E-mail from my provider it always has an automatic message at the end stating that the information contained in it is for the recipient only and sharing it with anyone else is prohibited. I've sometimes wondered what would happen if I were to copy and paste this statement and use it in my own jobs applications. It's not as if the provider can moan at me for just doing the same thing that they do to me.

I have to go in every week now as well to use their slow, outdated computers to look for jobs. Whereas before I was regularly applying for 6-7 jobs per week, I have now cut back to the minimum of 3 per week that I am obliged to do. If they want to mess you about then return the favor.

I was wondering if anyone else has had any experience of this frustrating issue and could offer some advice on what I should do. I put in for a job just before Christmas that was advertised as being located in a nearby town within easy commuting distance (I am reliant upon public transport). I had a reply a few days later saying they weren't going to invite me in for an interview and so thought no more about it. Yesterday however I got a phone call from them saying several people had canceled their interviews and they were inviting me to go in and see them. I said yes straight away before they had given me their address. It turns out that they are actually located about 4 miles outside the town in some small village with no rail or bus services available, and the route I would have to walk from the nearest bus stop is all narrow country lanes with no paths. I've still got a copy of the advert and it makes no mention of needing your own transport and just gives their address as the name of the town.

I think they get currently get an 'attachment fee' of between £400 and £600 when someone first starts the WP, which is going to be phased out over the next year or so. I don't know what they do with that money as my provider refuses to pay my travel expenses. They say they only pay when people spend more than two hours at the centre (the average face-to-face interview lasts about 40 minutes).

My understanding is that people on this new scheme will be doing exactly the same type of non-jobs that people on community service have to do. You won't be doing a real job working for a real employer, like those who go to Poundland or Tesco do.

Hmmm. This might explain why my provider has sent me on an IT course to gain qualifications I already have.

Another story here about a woman who had to do unpaid work even though she had just paid to go on a college course. http://www.redpepper.org.uk/all-work-and-no-pay/ Sounds like the government have got a nice deal worked out with the supermarkets to help them out if they are targeting people already doing voluntary work / college courses, etc.

What happens after the three months is up and they want to put in a claim for ESA? Will they then have to wait a further three months collecting the equivalent of JSA whilst a Work Capability Assessment is carried out?

That person was assuming that everyone on JSA also claims other benefits such as housing.

Hi Revenant , she said she worked for Anglian Water. I'll give them a call as you suggest and see what they say, thanks.

Hello, I'm looking for a bit of advice concerning Anglian Water. My father was rushed to hospital this morning with a suspected blood clot and about 10 minutes later I had a visit from a nice lady who handed me a card and told me that if he doesn't get in contact within 24 hours they will take him to court. I explained the situation to her and said that I have no idea when he is going to be home again and that he has bigger problems to worry about at the moment but she wasn't interested. I have no idea what I should do as I have never had to deal with anything like this before, and I obviously don't want to burden my dad with this problem at this time. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Thanks for the reply. I took a walk down earlier and it was all locked up, better to be safe than sorry though.

I was due to sign on today but have just realized that today is a bank holiday, won't the jobcentre be closed? They normally tell me in advance when I don't need to go in but they didn't say anything to me this time.

Hello all, I've been thinking about getting in contact with a couple of agencies in my area to see if they could help find me work but I'm not very keen on the idea of doing temporary or part-time work. Would I be allowed to join an agency and then pick & choose the jobs I want to do whilst turning down any temporary jobs if they were offered to me or would the jobcentre class this as refusing a job? Sorry if this is a stupid question but I have never been with an agency before and I have no idea how they work or how they fit in with my JSA. Thanks.

Yeah I heard back from them over the job I applied for by E-mail and they have cleared me of any wrong-doing, which was nice of them. If this report is accurate, they have been giving me the wrong address to use to send off my evidence, so that might explain the long wait. Bypass Norwich! Local benefit claimants must read Ipswich Unemployed Action.

I never did get a reply from the jobcentre about any of this. For a couple of weeks they did send me letters telling me to keep signing on as normal but they stopped coming about a month ago. I don't know if that's good news or not. Ho hum. In other news, I did discover a couple of weeks back that their much touted Flexible New Deal initiative lives up to its name and is indeed *very* flexible as I was told when I went in for an interview that I have been on it since the end of May. Which was the first I had heard of it. Apparently I'm up to 'stage 3' already.

I never had any problems from the jobcentre when I did volunteer work, they were quite encouraging about it. They would occasionally send out some forms to the charity that asked for confirmation that they were not paying me for my work but that's about it. My jobcentre even told me to make a note of the days I worked on my work log as they consided it to be a part of my actively seeking work commitments as I was gaining experience from it.

There was a show on Channel 4 last week called Benefit Busters that featured one young man having some sort of medical. From what I could make out, a woman (who as far as I know didn't have any medical experience) asked him a series of questions and wrote down the answers along with everything she witnessed during the interview. This report was then later passed onto someone else who read it and made a decision on the mans ability to work based on its contents. I have no idea if this is the standard procedure for this sort of thing but it all seemed a bit haphazard to me.

*Sigh* Do you ever get the feeling that you are being deliberately targeted? No news about the first dispute, but I have had another letter this morning about yet another job they say I failed to apply for back in July. Luckily, I never empty my sent E-mail folder so I have a copy of the E-mail I sent at that time when I applied for the job along with the date I sent it (it was for an agency). Do you think it's worth trying to make a complaint? This is getting a bit farcical now.