I am dealing with an appeal from a lady whose 17-year old (disabled) son started one of these courses last September. Child Benefit for the son stopped, so when we found out about this some months later she had a massive overpayment (not only did she lose the dependant’s allowance from her applicable amount, but also disabled child and enhanced disability premiums).
Child Benefit has now been reinstated for the son from April 2006. I spoke to the CHB people on Friday, who told me that E2E courses did disqualify people from CHB when they were first introduced, but the law was amended from April to make them eligible again…but this will not be made retrospective.
I feel I can justify continuing to treat the son as a dependant from the start of the course – E2E courses count as Level 1 NVQ, and CHB is not an essential requirement for dependant status, besides which it would seem odd to say that he was not a dependant for a short while but is again now, despite the fact that nothing else changed in the family’s circumstances.
Can anybody offer me some experience, knowledge or moral support on this?
Thanks in advance…
[Wow, I’m a newb again!]
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