Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

I’m looking for opinions please on this hypothetical scenario.

LA gets an HBMS match saying the claimant is not resident (or you can use any other HBMS reason). On investigation the LA decides that the claimant IS resident but whilst doing the investigation discovers undisclosed capital (again, you can use any other reason for a decrease in HB)

Option A – the resulting overpayment can be deemed to be discovered by the HBMS referral as the LA wouldn’t have looked at the case without HBMS flagging it up.

Option B – the resulting overpayment can not be deemed to be discovered by HBMS as although the LA looked at the case because of the HBMS referral it was the LA’s investigation that discovered the reason for the decrease in HB.

Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Martin

For what reason would you want to evaluate this? Are you considering it in terms of reporting back to HBMS on their results sheet?

If so, I would say option B, because I would only report the change in benefit and overpayment to HBMS, that related directly to the indicated descrepancy on the match.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it’s purely about reporting back to HBMS.

[Andy Simpson]

I’d go with B as well – Only report changes directly related to reason for HBMS.

[Anonymous]

I agree with option B, but, having visited the busy souls at Lytham, they love a bit of feed-back if there is anything of interest to tell them. An e-mail will do, they have a newsletter and are always looking for snippets to put into it. If their work has led to a change in benefits, even indirectly, I am sure they would like to know.

[Daz Webb]

I’d go for B too, otherwise you’d be recording it as a HBMS referral for something they knew nothing about!

[Author]

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