Hi just signed up - what a great site.

[c.hill]

I am a military lawyer who has just signed up as a member as I am impressed with the content of this site. I do a lot of Court Martial work and attend RMP interviews with service personnel free of charge at home and abroad. If anyone wants any free advice on military law topics I am happy to oblige. Also I hope that I can post queries I might have on technical military issues in the cases I am dealing with to get a bit of expert help.Thanks !

[c.hill]

What a lot of JPA problems there are at the moment. it seems to be the season for prosecuting people for this sort of thing. anyone else noticed an upsurge in investigations into JPA?

[druadan]

We now seem to be in a worse state than before it came in; presumably to cut down on the number of fraudulent claims (which to my mind are mainly made because people don't understand the system or what they're entitled to - it's a common misconception (mainly because this was how it was originally briefed when it came in) that all claims get forwarded up your chain of command and must be approved before they get paid; lads tend to claim for anything, assuming that if they're not entitled it will be rejected) we now have to get all the authorisations on budget control forms that you used to have to get on a C30, THEN go and put the claim in through JPA as well, essentially doubling the amount of work required and not reducing paperwork at all. It's a farce.

[c.hill]

The danger with JPA is that people don't know what they are doing and think that there is a system at the other end which filters the claims. They believe that if the claim goes through then they are entitled to the money...WRONG!! The system does return claims that are technically wrong but does not know what you are entitled to. If you were not entitled or you haven't got the receipts you can be in trouble. This is a dangerous area! Be aware.

[druadan]

Exactly. Obviously it's a failing on the applicants part that he hasn't checked if he is entitled; however, with the old system you'd never get authorisation in the first place if you weren't. Now, at my unit at least, to prevent these mistakes happening so much, you have to trawl round the same personalities as used to have to sign a C30 (OC, SSM, pay office) AND claim on JPA.

A good start point would be a distributed publication detailing when you're entitled to the most common claims - things like IEs, duty travel, hotels, disturbance allowance etc, and perhaps also an Annex on joining instructions/movement orders/ex instructions stating what you are allowed to claim for that particular course/op/ex/job etc. We all know that the most common answer when asking anyone for anything in the military is 'come back later'...when you have to do this three or four times just to put a claim in for a course it becomes a major nause and can take days, which if you're busy can make claims you are entitled to near on impossible in any kind of reasonable timescale.

[c.hill]

The surge in JPA prosecutions goes on. I now represent a Phase Two recruit, a Brigadier! and all points in between. I have just done a Navy case where a lad was done for seven counts of fraud and thrown out. We managed to prove that he had made most of the journeys and so he won his appeal and was re-instated in the Navy. Anyone who needs help call me. Foster wells 01252 343567