In my opinion you need to establish whether the customer claimed IS through the CMS route or or clerically.
If you find out they claimed through CMS and that they expressed an intention to claim HB/CTB at that time (receipt of ETD suggests this to be the case) then it seems likely that it’s JC+ fault that you didn’t get a LAID and you should use the Date of Contact as the claim date. So long as the customer returned your form within a month of you sending it which in this case he/she did.
I asked the Adelphi for some clarificartion along these lines and was told that the date of first contact is the date the customer makes the call to CMS (an intention to claim) and that the HB/CTB claim is actually made when the customer goes into JC+ for their work focused interview. They submit a claim statement at that interview which is effectively the claim (within the regs) and then we get the LAID form which actually isn’t a claim form (within the regs). It doesn’t matter how long it takes us to get the LAID, the month to make a claim is from the Date of First Contact to the interview date.
If they claimed at a JC+ office and were issued with an HCTB1 and failed to return it within the month then they don’t get the benefit of the date of first contact.
That’s what we do anyway.
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