Terms & Conditions

[Stalbansbenefits]

Claimant moves into our area from a neighbouring authority. Was in receipt of benefit at previous address and fails to claim immediately with ourselves as ‘she thought benefit would simply transfer to new address’.

Subsequently requests a back-date.

For various reasons I don’t think she has demonstrated good cause for not claiming at an earlier date, but before we proceed to a tribunal I am wary of the argument that a change of address, even from one authority to another, is a change of circs and should be treated as such for the purposes of start dates etc.

Is anyone aware as to whether this argument has ever been considered by the Commissioners?

[Kevin D]

Sorry StAlbans, don’t know of any CDs where that has been at issue – and I’ve just spent many hours trawling through 300+ CDs and none address the issue of moving from one LA to another.

From memory, doesn’t s.134 SSBCA require that a claim MUST be made within the LA for the property to which benefit relates? There was a thread on HBinfo months ago where s.134 was mentioned, but I don’t have time at the moment to go rummaging….

My recollection is that moving from one LA to another is one of the 3 (or is it 4? :shock:) situations where HB MUST cease. If that is correct, then it would need some legal gymnastics to make a change of address “continuous” between LAs….

Regards

[Stalbansbenefits]

Thanks Kevin, just surprised no-one has ever attempted that argument before. It might be considered a bit of an odd situation where a claimant can move 30 miles within an authority and this is a simple COC, whereas they might move to the next street and suddenly find they are subject to all the rules on ‘new’ claims. It must be a real issue for claimants moving within London.

I seem to remember that previous editions of Zebedee and Ward even suggested this is an argument a claimant may like to put to an authority if they had previously been claiming elsewhere, but they seem to have dropped this from the most recent edition.

[Kevin D]

Had 5 minutes to have a look at an extended payment CD – [b:51ee2eeeea]CH/1762/2004[/b:51ee2eeeea] (under “Miscellaneous” in the caselaw section for CDs – although the link isn’t yet working).

It was an extended payment change-of-address case (from one LA area to another). It was also in the days of benefit periods.

[b:51ee2eeeea]Para 6[/b:51ee2eeeea] shows that the Commissioner considered continuity of benefit at the new address. On the facts of this case, it does appear that the Commissioner thought that a new claim was needed in order to effect continuity of benefit. HOWEVER, there is no way of knowing whether that view (about the need for a new claim) would have been the same if benefit periods had not been in existence.

Regards

[Anonymous]

The links to the case law should all now work – they were all hidden. 😳

[Author]

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