[Anonymouse]

'Beset' with problems? It is a problem. The entire approach is wrong. The jobcentre staff are now utterly useless; if you want to do anything, it's either go online or call the 0345 number - the whole system has essentially gone faceless. Even claiming for travelling expenses is needlessly complicated - instead of just going to a desk and buttonholing anyone who isn't with a "customer" (God, I hate being called that by those nonentities!), giving them your NI number and evidence that you've got an interview, you've got to make an appointment first - and the only way to do that is to phone them.

Even then you don't get through to a person - instead of a menu system, they've got this stupid voice recognition system to direct your call...and if you can't figure out exactly what to say, or if it can't understand you, you're screwed - and paying to be screwed, at that!

Oh, you can go to a UCAN centre to make the call, but from what the staff have told me, they're not going to last much longer either - the fact that housing benefit is now paid to the claimant rather than directly to the landlord/local authority means they're losing revenue, and hence funding. They may end up closing. I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

Why the government, to use the term very loosely, thinks it's better to pay housing benefit to the claimant is unclear. I can only assume they're saving money on admin by doing away with housing benefit. In other words, it benefits them, not us.

In the jobcentre, you've got Group 4 pretending to earn their keep by not letting anyone upstairs unless they've got an appointment. You can't even stay in the jobcentre if you don't have an appointment or you're not looking for a job - anyone just waiting for a relative/friend has to wait outside...even if it's raining.

As for that weird mutant version of IE11 they've got running...well, it has improved slightly: there are now two navigation buttons, Forward and Back.

Stop laughing. It really is an improvement.