Must JSA claimants be ASW for a minimum of 35 hours per week

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Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Where a JSA claimant is seeking full-time work what guidance, in DMG or LMDM procedural guidance or other internal, guidance is available to JCP staff on the minimum/maximum/average number of hours per week that a JSA claimant should be actively seeking work?

Would the number of hours sought by JCP staff from JSA claimants tend to increase/decrease the longer the claimant was on benefit - or would DWP expect the same level of hours each week irrespective of the length of the JSA claim?

Is there any DWP guidance along the lines of:-
"...as JSA is a daily benefit, claimants are expected to do some job-seeking activity 7 days per week...", and
"...we have an expectation that claimants will be ASW for a minimum of 35 hours per week.."

Can management at District or local level issue written or verbal guidance to local staff to instruct or encourage staff to proceed along the above lines.

The above request is in relation to JSA. Is the guidance any different for those offices where Universal Credit is in payment.

Is the guidance publically available via web link, and if not can it be provided in response to this FOI request?

Have there been any ministerial speeches or statements which relate to the above topic, eg where ministers have indicated that they think guidance/legislation in this area needs to be made more explicit?

Yours faithfully,

Brian Martin

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Put simply the FOI Act is about disclosure of information that existed at the time of the request or relates to information that best answers questions raised in an FOI request. However, the DWP is increasingly using FOI responses on whatdotheyknow.com to espouse DWP propaganda to achieve it's own internal objectives, often without any legal basis or associated guidance to staff who indirectly impose these objectives.

In this response the DWP is seeking to suggest that Jobsearch activity is a full-time activity for people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance, when in fact this is not the case. CPAG outlines the situation more accurately:

"If you have carried out all or most of the steps in your claimant committment, this should be sufficient to show that you are actively seeking work. However, a failure to carry out all, or some, steps should not mean you are automatically treated as not actively seeking work. This is particularly relevant where your claimant commitment includes many more steps than the legal test of ‘more than two’.

Case law [1] confirms that whether you are actively seeking work is a test of what you do, rather than what you do not do. The test is whether you take such steps as you are reasonably required to take to secure the best prospects of obtaining employment, and not whether you take all the steps set out in your claimant commitment. The DWP should consider whether you have taken at least three steps in a week, or whether fewer steps are reasonable; what steps are taken; and whether those steps are reasonable. If you satisfy the test, it is irrelevant that you fail to take other steps, whether or not they are in your commitment."
http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/ask-cpag-...

[1] - CJSA/1814/2007
https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http:/...