Terms & Conditions

[nick dearnley]

What exactly does the FtT decision notice say? If the notifications etc were not in the bundle, I’d expect the decision to be that there is no recoverable overpayment because the council has not produced evidence that it has revised the HB entitlement (to nil) and that there has been an overpayment of £xxx.xx for the period x to y.

It’s your (or whoever writes your submissions) responsibility to put all relevant evidence in the bundle; if you don’t you can’t expect the judge to take account of it. From the FtT’s point of view you haven’t made the appealed decision if you can’t evidence it (put simply…). There’s no requirement on a judge to issue directions to an LA to correct something so basic, and it’s more than a slip of the pen technical issue.

You could reissue the notifications, correcting the defect, and starting the dispute/appeal process all over again. But I’d expect a subsequent tribunal to take a dim view of that, as it’s essentially having another go at something because you didn’t do it properly the first time; from the FtT’s point of view they’ve decided, and from the appellant’s point of view they have won their appeal. You could ask for it to be set aside on the grounds that you think the judge has jumped the gun and should have issued directions (obviously we made a decision, we just mucked up the submission, sorry your honour we won’t do it again, etc), but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I’d chalk it up to experience.