First of all it is maladministration to use income from a scheme which has now been abolished. Secondly, it is likely to result in a lot of extra work for the LA. It is now clear that the IR is not going to assess all the claims by the beginning of April. Thus many of the awards will contain payments of arrears as well as being in arrears. These will have to be seperated and the “of arrears” ignored as capital. It is not simply going to be a matter of just putting in the new income and taking out the old figures from 7 April in the HB reassessment. This will be very messy indeed where an LA has used notional amounts and will require multiple reassessments but for the rest of us we will only need to recalculate from the first payment date. In this instance, the right way will prove to be the best way.
