peirre:
Winseer:
I think I might actually take a job just to get me through my DCPC
IF you have to fund your own DCPC the bleak season is the time to do any training.
Winseer:
now the lack of work over the next few weeks looks like trashing my holiday pot. 
The best advice i can give you is draw your pot now or within the next few weeks BEFORE the fall off in work wrecks the 13 week average that the pot is based on, even if the value of the pot is tiny. Because if you don`t, the pot will be even more tiny
To my knowledge, my pot gets incremented with every shift I work. Once the money is in there, it doesn’t get removed again just because I’ve sat out some days. The pot goes down when I draw any amount out of it, rather than “because of any averages” that of course change every week.
I reckon this system given me is the fairest way to do it actually. 
The pot is incremented by the agency adding new money to it, and NOT as a deduction from pay like so many umbrella schemes out there would do instead… 
Eg. Work an 8 hour shift @ £10ph, get £10 added to the pot (roughly, as I don’t know the exact formula, just a figure of “12%” mentioned which begs the question “12% of what…? Gross? Taxable? Net? Contents of the biscuit tin?”
When taking the pot, it’s best to spread it over the weeks when work is not anticipated. Let’s say you’ve got £1000 to come: You might elect to take £125 per week for 8 weeks (pays zero tax and NIC’s that way!) rather than take it all in one hit, which would see you paying about £164 tax and £110 NICS out of which you’d get a tax rebate of the £164, but I don’t think you get back overpaid NIC’s on a week one/month one basis.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong about ‘not being able to re-claim ALL deductions made on a lump sum £1000 drawn in any one week’… 
At the beginning of this year, when I was still fairly new to agency work, and had no pot built up, I found myself on the sidelines for NINE weeks. I’ve tried to learn from the experience this next time around, but I’m still ill-prepared for a period of no work in the new year even longer than that!
There are a few on this board who think I’m some kind of scumbag because this happened to me. I would really rather not find myself signing on in the new year, now I now what a crock of ■■■■ it all is. If I don’t get any work though, how do I get my stamp paid from week to week?
A residule single flat shift per week would of course keep me off the dole no worries, but I’m already led to believe that this is apparently “asking too much” of my multiple agency “memberships”.! 
I was “given” two seperate shifts the last weekend, and had them both cancelled. Then back on again, then cancelled again.
Final score - zero work since last thursday. Buggeredabout factor 98.4%!
Client firms themselves seem too stingy to get anyone in across Christmas this year…
SO much for the “amazing online Christmas” we’ve supposed to have just had.
Last year I was offered 4x5 night blocks running upto the end of the year, of which I took three week’s worth. This year, I’ve not had a full week’s worth since September! An entire week’s worth of work is far less likely to be cancelled at the last minute than odd shifts, because it is “forseen leave cover” like the regular FT guy is on holiday, rather than “some bod went sick at the last minute” or “we’ve offered it to everyone else, but they refused for some reason or other”.
All work in this industry is NOT “last minute cover for sickies” FFS!
Besides, WHY does this “it’s on, it’s off it’s on it’s off” keep happening? DO people ‘phone in sick’, then ‘forget to take the day off’, and turn up anyway■■?
Or perhaps it is just some kind of “undercut race” where a shift is given out to me, for say £10ph, and someone else pipes up “I’ll do it guv for £8ph” in which case it’s the undercutting driver that’s to blame for “gazundering” me…
When are the insurance companies going to wise-up and stop insuring the “9 points ok” crowd to work their 84 hour weeks, because the client is too tight-fisted to pay a reasonable hourly rate to someone with over 2 decades of experience and zero points like me?
