Bypass the Benefit Delay Scandal
Jobcentre Plus gets correspondence sent to the below published address for the Suffolk (?) area:
Bury St Edmunds BDC
Thorpe Road
Norwich
NR99 1AD
It actually then gets redirected to:
Bury St Edmunds BDC
St Andrews St North
Bury St Edmunds
IP33 1TT
This is intentional to delay your appeal and your correspondence going to a decision maker.
Post a letter today to the actual Bury St Edmunds BDC Address via first class Royal Mail service it should arrive tomorrow or the following day.
Send it to the Norwich address (notice the NR99 postcode, this is a special postcode it doesn’t really exist) it can take up to a month for anyone from the BDC to process it (I have seen a document I sent to the BDC with a stamp confirming this).
Appealing?
Next time use the actual physical address not the Norwich processing centre address and they should be able to process it within a week.
Hope this helps.
this has been happening in other areas also,locally the job centre mail is directed to an address twenty five miles away,i have heard mentioned by job centre staff “where it gets opened”.
so much for confidential information,it is a development that raises questions.obviously its read before it gets to the person its supposed to.
Comment by ken — November 10, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
Please see for more information on this issue:
http://flexible-new-deal.co.uk/2009/08/17/information-commissioner-jobcentre-plus-send-sensitive-information/
The ICO says this is perfectly fine – my concerns is 1) people assume that it goes straight to Jobcentre Plus and not some Mail Sorting centre i.e. we aren’t told that it is processed by a third party – and that there is no justifiable reason why the Jobcentre needs this service.
Comment by Flexible New Deal — November 10, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
Not to mention probably the other reason of such delay is the Jobcentre thinking unemployed people will be sending radioactive parcels…
Comment by Flexible New Deal — November 18, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
Rubbish! They’ll do anything they can to keep your grubby arse off the dole!
Comment by TinJ — November 20, 2009 @ 11:54 pm