Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

Hi all, just a Friday brain gone blank question……………..

Scenario
Claimant informs us on the 29/11/06 that her non-dep son moved out of her household on the 20/09/06 due to a disagreement. However you would not believe this but the non-dep JSA IB ceases 26/09/06 and the claimant has no forwarding address due to the bad terms on which he left………..

Would I treat it as a late notification and create an overpayment for the period of the late notification (02/10/06 – 03/12/06)

or

Would I remove the non-dep from the date given and un-ent the whole period.

Jonathan 😕

Apologies if this is too straight forward.

[Anonymous]

You seem to have two options.

Option 1: you do not believe the claimant when she says that her son moved out in September; indeed you strongly suspect he has not moved at all. If so, there has only been one change of circumstance so you would make a superseding decision increasing the non-dep deduction from late September and there has been an overpayment.

Option 2: you do believe that the son moved out without leaving a forwarding address, and coincidentally found work the following week. The first change of circumstance is advantageous presumably: £7.40 deduction no longer applies after he moved out. Because this change was reported late, you treat it as if it happened in November. Does this mean that you have to increase the non-dep deduction for the period between the date he started work and the date on which you now pretend he moved out under Reg 8(3)? I don’t think so. Reg 8(3) is a deeming provision intended to deprive the claimant of arrears when they delay reporting an advantageous change. A deeming fiction should only be applied to achieve its intended purpose. When it comes to the change in the non-dep’s financial circumstances the week after he moved out, you would be taking the deeming fiction too far if you pretended that he was still living there. The correct approach is to say that there has only been one relevant change of circs – he moved out. Because that change of circs is advantageous and was reported late, you delay it until November, but forget about that fact that in real life he had started work by then.

[seanosul]

There is a third option but it ends up with the same result to the claimant asd the option 2 put forward by Peter. Applying the negative change of circumstances and then awarding underlying entitlement for the period of the overpayment based on the non-dep leaving. The result would be to only credit the underpayment from the date the LA was told.

[Author]

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