Terms & Conditions

[ig2kbar]

With all the hoo ha! at the moment about overpayments and recovery think i am looking too deeply at what is essentially a “simple” appeal?
Customer claimed hb – payment never made to landlord – customers partner starts work in April 06 and customer notifies of that in May 06 – LA suspends June 06 – information is sought – because of change of circs becomes non – qualifier – customer notifed in July 06 – benefit then overpaid from date partner started work to date bens paid to when suspended? – customer (only) notified of overpayment? Am i missing something crucially important or is this just a straightforward run of mill – started work – overpaid – pay it back 😳

[peterdelamothe]

The only issue I can see is whether there is an official error between the time you were notified of the CinC and suspending the claim. Otherwise, its just a recoverable overpayment.

Although the changes and case-law do mainly impact on cases where there is a landlord overpayment, I would suggest that you consider your overpayment decision letters in general. I would expect them to come under a lot more scrutiny.

[ig2kbar]

Thanks for that Peter –
off the top of your head – anyone! Isn’t there a comms decision that covers “reasonable delay” etc in relation to an Authority acting on a change in circs??? and the length of time it takes for an LA to act on a notified change in circs??

[gerryg]

I don’t know if this thread will answer your query

https://hbinfo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5178%5Bcolor=darkred:534ca9afad%5D%5B/color:534ca9afad%5D%5Bcolor=darkred:534ca9afad%5D%5B/color:534ca9afad%5D%5Bcolor=darkred:534ca9afad%5D%5B/color:534ca9afad%5D

[Anonymous]

I am aware of at least four:

CH/3629/2002
CH/2741/2003
CH/0454/2005

In all of these cases, the Commissioners recognised that LAs do not process changes the instant they barrive in the office and that there is inevitably a turn-around period – you wouldn’t call that an error.

The last one in particular is quite surprising: the Council got away with a delay of almost 2 months (which included Christmas and New Year)

By way of contrast, in CH/0881/2005 (also including the Christmas and New Year break), the Commissioner felt that 11 days ought to have been long enough to deal with new information and failure to do so was therefore an error.

So it’s a piece of string job, I’m afraid

[Author]

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