You are all stars, many thanks.

It's comforting to know:

a) that I'm not going potty

b) that it's them, not me

c) that I'm not alone

Thank you for this.

Interesting. Looks like my experience re DPA breaches is going to be slightly different to you, "Worried33". Does it make a difference that in my case DWP were the ones who noticed the breaches in the first place?!

Hope your ICE went better in other respects.

I am at stage of escalating complaint to Terry Moran COO of DWP. When in due course no doubt I get a "non-answer" from his office too, ICE is the next stage....

Many thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.

Being thick here, but should I get ICO involved now or when I get the new SAR information (worried they'll tell me to go away and wait)?

I took DWP to Tribunal to appeal a Carer's Allowance overpayment.

To find out what information they held on me and my husband we put in Subject Access Requests. We received back 2 sets of documents (thick in my husband's case and very thin in mine). I assumed that they had the right to withhold quite a lot of information because my case was still active.

My Tribunal was heard (and I'm pleased to say I won). Less than a week after the Tribunal the Data Protection Team in Glasgow wrote to both of us saying in essence, "whoops we made a mistake and didn't send all the information we should have done. Do you still want it?" We didn't - our reason for asking for it had past and we felt like having a rest from DWP and all their machinations.

Now I am going through the DWP complaints procedure and this failure to disclose is one of the complaints I am making.

Out of the blue we've just received some bizarre letters from the Data Protection Team in Cardiff thanking us for our original SARs (now over a year ago) and saying they'll issue the records ASAP.

I think we should probably let them do this but take this to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) once they've sent everything to check that this time they really have sent everything they should have.

Is there anything else we should ask them for like compensation or something? and how do you judge what compensation they should make?

Should we think about taking them to Court? (we won't get Legal Aid and can't afford a solicitor so we'd have to represent ourselves but it seems fairly straightforward - but are there any bear-traps we can't see as amateurs?)

All advice very welcome on this.

Thanks

Many thanks for sharing these experiences.

So it's not just me then....

I may well be taking DWP to the Parliamentary Ombudsman - may I share what's happened to you if I do?

many thanks - been having a look around.....

Like what I see!

I looked at the DWP report and accounts for 2010/11 and was astonished by what I found.

As my username suggests I am in dispute with DWP and therefore I have had to try and phone the Carer's Allowance Unit at Palatine House many times. Because of my caring duties I usually have to phone after about 3.30 pm.

My experience is completely opposite to the statistics listed in the PDCS Annual Report and Accounts 2010/11 targets (I have a difficulty with URLs on this site because I'm not allowed to post them yet (

Telephony

Ensure that at least 93% of calls to our telephone service are answered first time. 94.2%

Ensure that less than 1% of calls to our telephone service receive the

engaged/busy tone 0.2%

a) I nearly always get an engaged tone for many attempts

b) if I do get through, it's often to a call centre who offer me a callback service. This callback has come once and that not at the arranged time.

Obviously the targets in the Report and Accounts are for the whole service, but even so....

Or is it that some parts of DCS are so good at answering calls that it skews the figures (!)

Anecdotal evidence welcome - I'm probably going to take my complaints against DWP to the Parliamentary Ombudsman so any weight to my cause would be very helpful.

What a wonderful place! Wish I'd found it years ago....

As my username suggests I'm in a battle royal with DWP. Feel like I'm winning so far so will post some tips in the relevant thread.....