During June, customers may experience slight disruption to our service when making new claims to contribution based benefits such as Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Incapacity Benefit (IB). This is as a result of an upgrade to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Custom’s (HMRC) National Insurance Recording System. Our staff often access information from HMRC to help process these benefits.

The system will be unavailable to Jobcentre plus staff between 12.00 noon on 19th June 2009 until 12.00 noon on the 24th June 2009 (within HMRC it will be down for longer). During this time current customers should be unaffected, but new JSA and ESA customers will be asked to provide their P60 (annual pay statement) so that staff can establish details of their national insurance records and assess their entitlement to benefit. Where someone is not able to provide a P60 they may be asked for wage slips or full details of previous employment so that we can write to their employer for the information.

Other than the customer being asked to provide their P60 during this period there should be no other changes to our services.

The system, once upgraded, will provide a much more efficient service to both our customers and HMRC's. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.