Terms & Conditions

[Ali Booth]

I am currently dealing with a reconsideration request regarding an 😕 overpayment of HB/CTB, the overpayment is over £12,000.

The overpayment has occured as a result of a fraud investigation. It was found that our claimant had in excess of £8,000.00 going back to 2001.
The Fraud department have contacted the DWP to inform them of their findings. The DWP have stated that as they have archived the files they will not be cancelling any of the claimants entitlement to Income Support and therefore not creating any overpayment (claimant has been on PCGC since 04)

They have however stated that had they have known that the claimant had capital exceeding the capital limit for Income Support he may not have been entitled.

On this basis we have cancelled HB/CTB. My question now is, are we able to cancel HB/CTB on the basis that we have evidence to prove that the claimant may not have been entitled to Income Support, even though the DWP will not cancel Income Support.

[chris harvey]

Yes.
In the case R v South Ribble BC ex parte Hamilton (2000) the judge upheld the councils decision not to pay benefit based on the IS award because there was evidence to show that the claimant was not lawfully entitled to the IS.
If you can show with the evidence you have that the claimant is not entitled to IS you can look behind the award of IS and do not have to blindly follow the lead of the DWP and award maximum benefit.

[Kevin D]

R v South Ribble BC ex parte Hamilton (2000) is on this site:

new.hbinfo.org.com/menu2/caselaw/hamilton.rtf

Para 27 sums it up quite nicely.

[seanosul]

Capital of £8k producing a £12k overpayment? I think some underlying entitlement and diminishing notional capital rules need to be applied on this one.

[Anonymous]

Sean has a point – when you say “over £8000”, by how much do you mean? If it was, say, £8100, the absolute worst effect that would have on HB would be to reduce HB by £5.85 a week (before October 2003) and £3.25 a week thereafter – even before you start to diminish the notional capital. So the overpayment could not possibly be £12000 on that figure. How much was the capital in fact?

You also cannot be certain that the claimant’s capital means they aren’t entitled to GC – you can only be certain that capital in excess of £8000 would have disqualified them from IS. So you are not in a position to start thinking about overpayments after the claimant went onto GC until the DWP decides whether the claimant has lost GC entitlement – if DWP
is happy with the GC award now, there is probably a good reason: pension income plus tariff income is less than the claimant’s GC amount.

Do you have more details you can give us?

[Anonymous]

But….thinking aloud here…..

if the decision in 2001 was that they were no longer entitled to HB based on the fact that they were no longer entitled to IS, wouldn’t the claim have been terminated? The “top line” o/p would be more than £5.85 per week. Would that have contributed to an original o/p figure of £12k?

Agreed that u/e still needs to apply though.

[Author]

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