I have a case where there is a HB overpayment involved and I am trying to make sure that we aren’t falling foul of CH/4234/2004 before we get to the Tribunals Service! What happened was:
1. we paid HB direct to the landlord
2. following a fraud investigation, we decided in Jan 06 that the clmt wasn’t occupying and the arrangement hadn’t been commercial. This produced a HB op for March 05 – June 05. The investigation had focused primarily on the claimant, not the landlord.
3. we decided to make the claimant responsible for the op and wrote to notify her about this. We never referred to her landlord in the letters in terms of considering him for recoverability and we never wrote to tell the landlord that there had been an overpayment
3. the decision was appealed in Feb 06 by the claimant
4. we wrote to the claimant on 13 Apr 06 to revise the grounds on which HB had been refused – we added in that the arrangement had been contrived – again no mention of the landlord and nothing sent to him. A further month was given for any other representations against the new decision.
5. then on 12 May 06 along came CH/4234/2004 …
6. the claimant’s argument essentially is that she was living there, it was commercial and not contrived. She wants the op cancelling and payments of HB to resume.
7. we are now wanting to write the submission, but in the light of CH/4234/2004, do we need to do any re-notifying first? Should we pull the landlord into the frame for recoverability too? What is the best way to go about it to avoid making the claimant jump through any unnecessary hoops to get the case to the Tribunals Service.
Does anyone have any advice please? Thank you
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