Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

In Feb 09 OP created. Definitely an official error. However claimant also definitely knew about the OP as, in June 09, she contacted us to ask for the recovery from ongoing rate to be reduced.

In Aug 10 (18 months later) she sent in an appeal. In my view this has to be outside the 13 month limit. I sent it to Tribunal as unsupported late appeal. However the Tribunal Service have decided to admit the appeal and have asked for a full submission.

Surely they can’t do that :shock:. Any suggestions?

[peterdelamothe]

Yes I think they can. When the rules first came in, there seemed to be a conflict; the 13 month time limit and the absolute discretion given to Tribunals to decide what the rules are. This was never really resolved although all agreed there was a need for the legislation to be clarified. I know some changes are due to come in next month but in the meantime a Tribunal Judge can do as they please.

[jowalraven]

Was this not resolved by The Tribunal Procedure (Amendment No 2) Rules 2009, SI 2009 No 1975 which prohibited appeals being admitted outside the 13 months??

We had a similar case and so we wrote and respectfully asked on what grounds had the appeal been admitted in view of the fact that the appeal was outside the absolute time limit.

As a result, the Judge provided a full explanation (decision notice) which in turn showed that they had made a mistake regarding the dates. We wrote back pointing this out and that if they still considered it to be in time, we would provide a full submiission but maintain that the appeal could not be heard.

The Tribunal Judge then realised the mistake and corrected the decision notice stating that the appeal was out of time and asked for the appellant’s comments. We’re now waiting and expect the appeal to be confirmed as struck out.

[peterdelamothe]

Yes you are quite right. So unless the Tribunal decided that the contact in June 2009 can be treated as an appeal, the matter is now outside jurisdiction. Explanatory note:

8.13 Rule 4 of these rules amends the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Social Entitlement Chamber) Rules 2008 to correct a time limit, so that the time for appealing decisions on housing benefit or council tax is always the same as it was for appealing to a Social Security Appeal Tribunal before the transfer of those appeals to the First-tier Tribunal in November 2008.

[Kevin D]

Just to clarify (hopefully), the amendment was interpreted by some as closing the 14-day statement of reasons / anytime appeal loophole. It didn’t. That loophole is still there – at least until/unless the proposed SoR time limit is introduced. However, having taken an albeit brief glance at the proposed amendment legislation, it will be strongly arguable the loophole will still not be closed. The reason? 🙂 I’m sitting on that for now.

[Author]

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