The DWP appears to be unable to organise the simplest of events when it comes to consulting about the Pathways To Work Green Paper, with its first virtual event becoming a deepening fiasco.
Last week we revealed that the blundering department had shared all the email addresses of the attendees, by listing them in the ‘To’ section of the joining email.
They then issued a non-apology email, blaming technical difficulties for having to cancel and then reschedule today’s Teams meeting.
This morning, when claimants attempted to join the consultation meeting, they were greeted by an error message and have so far heard nothing more from the department.
Ordinarily, each claimant would not have known whether they were the only one experiencing this error.
Happily, as the DWP had shared their email addresses they were able to communicate with each other. At least a dozen who responded to enquiries said they had also received the same error message. Nobody has said they were actually able to attend the meeting.
So whether it was a total failure or whether it went ahead with around half of it’s claimant participants missing we don’t know.
But we will let you know when we hear anything more.
Meanwhile, we understand that participants in the Manchester in-person consultation event on Wednesday 7 May, finally received details of the venue yesterday, on bank holiday Monday.
It’s almost as if the DWP don’t really want to consult with members of the public at all.
