Terms & Conditions

[Joanne Ross]

I have a lady whose benefit is currently being assessed using the diminishing capital regulation. She has since applied for and been awarded a Savings Credit because they use her actual captial. However, I am still assessing her benefit based upon her notional captial.

Can anyone please advise if this is correct or should I now be using her AIF and SC figures to assess her entilement to HB & CTB.

:15:

[Mark]

You should be using the AIF (which includes all necessary tariff income from capital) and the Savings Credit figure only from the Monday after you were told of the SC award by the Pension Service or the Monday after the actual SC award started – whichever is later. All your previous calculations of the income and capital are now irrelevant.

[Mark]

My previous reply is only correct if the net effect of an assessment based on the SC award and AIF combined is to decrease HB/CTB entitlement – if that’s not the case let us know and I’ll change the answer!

[Joanne Ross]

By using the AIF and SC figures she will be entitled to HB & CTB. Whereas still taking her notional capital into account means her entitlement remains nil. The notional capital goes back to 2002.

[Mark]

Ah – well if she’s not getting any HB/CTB right now then she’s going to have to claim HB/CTB again before she can get some. When/if she does claim again (and I certainly think you should tell her that she can and should) you will have to use the AIF and SC award details and the previous notional capital assessment won’t mean a thing. If I understand the time scales of this claim properly her “date of claim” will become the date that her SC award started and her HB/CTB will commence on the Monday after that.

[Anonymous]

We have had two very similar cases recently. I understand the premise that whatever the PS says goes, however, we have been advised that if a pensioner’s capital increases to more than £16k after an AIP has been set, the LA can make the claimant fail to qualify from when the capital increases.

If the regs make provision for this, it seems to me a nonsense to award hbctb based on a backdated AIF we know to be incorrect. I can go with the idea we award from the Monday after the AIF is set (i.e. date of PC award notification to claimant), as capital may have changed since our last assessment, but to award the backdated benefit as well seems crazy.

One of our claims has now been sorted by speaking to the Pension Service, the other, however, is pending a response from them. We have sent an LA17 to the Pension Service to notify them that the claimant has declared £10k more capital to us than to them only 6 weeks ago. This is a slightly different scenario to the notional capital but I would be interested in other people’s opinions on this. If the Pension Service come back with the answer I expect – that the AIP they have set will not be changed so the AIF stands, do I award a 52 week backdate?

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