Terms & Conditions

[petedavies]

Claimant pleads guilty to a number of benefit related charges at Crown Court.

She has an undeclared partner. They were living in a pub which they were running. Partner was also claiming HB for another address which he was sub letting. She was claiming HB for her home address, not sure what was happening with it while she was in the pub though.

Appeals late stating that none of the above is true (including the conviction part!), one of the grounds of DMA 18(7) is satisfied. Did not support the appeal because not in the interests of justice – the matter had been considered in a forum where the the process is weighted in the claimant’s favour.

I have asked for a statement of reasons and am toying with the notion of challenging it on the grounds of irrationality.

So, two questions:

1) The conviction itself is a fact but can TAS decide that the offence did not take place anyway (they would have to for any part of the appeal to succeed)?

2) Never been able to work out the pecking order in this sort of thing, I’ve come to the view that TAS should but need not consider the matter first (although this was not possible in this case). This is more from a sense of expediency than any knowledge on my part…at what point does a decision made within the criminal justice system (not in broad terms such as an actual conviction but where similar points are under consideration) become binding on TAS/Comms. I suspect CoA because this is where the two systems converge but…?

and finally…What happens to the conviction if the appeal is successful? 👿

[Nicky]

Pete

We have had a number of cases go to TAS where a claimant has successfully been prosecuted for benefit fraud.

It would be difficult (though not impossible) for an appellant to win at appeal as the burden of proof for a criminal conviction outweighs that for a tribunal (beyond reasonable doubt compared with balance of probabilities). It would be unlikely for a tribunal to go behind any findings of a court or in your case any guilty plea.

As regards the timing of these matters, we were directed by TAS to submit appeals to them as normal but to indicate on the AT37 that criminal proceedings were outstanding. TAS will then decide whether the appeal should be heard first. From experience, they have always heard the criminal proceedings first.

[Karen]

Pete

I have issued two submission to TAS which we were prosecuting, and indicated on the AT that this was the case. One was held back and one was heard.

the case that was heard had a submission that included all the fraud evidence – as it was decided that the clmt would have had access to this information at the hearing anyway – but thankfully this case was refused by the chair.

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