Terms & Conditions

[rd80]

Wondering if you can help… or clarify what we’ve done 🙂

Landlord (who have purchased our housing stock) move a tenant from one property to another in our area. This occured at the start of October 2006. Neither party informed us of the move until 7 November 2006.

We immediately suspended the claim and issued a new form. The next day we receive a Change of Adress form from the tenant and a letter for backdating benefit.

We then end the HB & CTB at the old address (October) and award HB & CTB at the new address but only from the monday following the date we received the form. The Backdate was refused. Reason was not considered good cause.

I now have the landlord (who stated they are clutching at straws)! trying to get us to pay the claimant from the date they occupied.

They have given a couple of reasons
1. Claimant over 60 (52 wk rule) – I explained this is for new customers only.
2. They are also stating that we should have got the customer to complete a new claim form – Explained that we were willing to accept the Change of Address form.

Has anyone got any opinions or suggestions.

[Mikeb2]

You could give the landlord a list of possible ‘Good Cause'(s) that are considered good enough and see if the claimant fits any of them?

Not sure if forgetful Landlords ‘clutching at straws’ is considered ‘Good Cause’ just yet. 😕

You might consider asking the landlord to write off the liability for the period because they messed up? 😉

Pigs might fly… 😈

[david kearney]

if there is a break in entitlement then you have a new claim and can backdate automatically under the over 60 provisions. A change of address is a change of circumstances anyway, and you can extend the time allowed to notify you if you consider it reasonable (not as stringent a test as good cause)
I would pay this and i would imagine that 99.9% of contributors to this board would do the same.

[Anonymous]

I agree with David that this should be paid, although for slightly different reasons.

The important point made by David is that this is a change of circumstances – so backdating is not an issue. What you do (hypothetically, at least) need to look at is whether or not the change in circumstances is advantageous or disadvantageous. If disadvantageous, you should amend the award to the new rate of benefit from the date of occupation at the new address.

If it is advantageous, you should (again, I stress, hypothetically) action the change in the award from the time at which it was reported. This will give you an overpayment as you will have ended the award at the previous address on the grounds that there was no liability. But you are then faced with two choices:

Firstly, you now have a break in entitlement, so a new claim is needed which is subject to the one-year rule for date of claim in pension age cases.

Secondly, you would have to calculate underlying entitlement for the overpayment period.

Either way, you are going to end up effectively paying continuously, and it is only if you take the overpayment/underlying entitlement route that the claimant will lose out.

I would also suggest that the overpayment route would be incorrect, as the fact that you have a period of nil entitlement must lead to a new claim being made.

[Anonymous]

Is this the case that Margaret Garner has raised on Rightsnet?

If so, from what I have read about the facts so far I would say she is right (but subject to any HB payments made in the meantime, which i will come to later).

You have a claimant who is entitled to HB in your area without a break, first at one address and then at the other. This is a change of circumstance in an ongoing award and the claimant’s continuing entitlement is not dependant on any new claim/change of address form or anything else. See HB Reg 59(2A)(a).

However, if the new rent is higher than the old one and you were not told within a calendar month, the claimant’s entitlement is limited to the old rate until the exact date you were informed: D&A Reg 8(3) says that Reg 59(2A) applies as if the change of address happened on the date it was reported.

But I think it would be helpful to know what payments were made after the move had happened, and to whom. Can you give us those details?

[Anonymous]

My apologies for typing in haste…

Peter is quite right about the “advantageous change” scenario – the award should continue at the old rate rather than terminating that award for lack of a liability at the old address (not that I haven’t seen this done on a few occasions). If you were to follow the overpayment/underlying entitlement route you would, however, achieve the same end in that the claimant would not have been overpaid and would not enjoy the increased award until the time at which they notified the change…but you would have put the claimant to the unnecessary trouble of completing a new application when the award should be continuous anyway.

[Kevin D]

For transparency (to Tracy), I’m the same Kevin D that has posted on the Rightsnet thread.

This more or less echoes what has already been posted above, but a couple of point by point observations are as follows:

[quote:5e284c245f]We immediately suspended the claim and issued a new form. The next day we receive a Change of Adress form from the tenant and a letter for backdating benefit.

We then end the HB & CTB at the old address (October) and award HB & CTB at the new address but only from the monday following the date we received the form. The Backdate was refused. Reason was not considered good cause. [/quote:5e284c245f]
The difficulty is the time frame. It was correct to suspend. But, the new info was received within one month. [b:5e284c245f]DAR 14[/b:5e284c245f] only allows a termination of claim if the info isn’t provided within one cal mth. Based on the facts given, the claim could only be terminated if the clmt hadn’t provided the info within one mth of being requested.

The new form isn’t a new claim – it is just information in support of a change of circs. The original claim at the old address still stands.

[quote:5e284c245f]1. Claimant over 60 (52 wk rule) – I explained this is for new customers only. [/quote:5e284c245f]
Even if a new claim had in fact been needed, the 52 week rule would still have applied for a 60+ claim. There is no limit to the number of times it is applied. But, as this case is a change of circs, it doesn’t affect this case.

As has been mentioned above, it’s possible that an increase of entitlement may fall foul of the “beneficial change” rules. However, on the Rightsnet thread, the L/L seems to acknowledge that it was at least partly responsible for a mix up that led to the delay in the LA being notified. So, it’s possible that there may be “special circumstances” that allow the one month notification period (re the change of circs) to be extended accordingly.

Regards

[rd80]

Thanks for your replies.

I’ll now be in touch with the landlords.

[Author]

Posts