Terms & Conditions

[Anselmo]

Hello all,

I work for a Registered Social Landlord and we have received a curious letter from a Local Authority saying that they will only pay us Housing Benefit direct for this particular tenant (I wonder if they will be doing it for all tenants in future), if we sign a statement saying we will repay [i:597362fcf3]any[/i:597362fcf3] overpayments that [i:597362fcf3]arise from a change in the claimant’s circumstances[/i:597362fcf3] (my emphasis).

Now, unless I’ve totally misunderstood the last 9 months of debate on this issue, I thought recovery from the landlord was now barred if the o/p was due to a failure by the claimant to declare a change in their circs that the landlord was unaware of. It seems to me that this LA is trying to bypass that by getting us to sign a statement saying we will repay ALL overpayments caused by a claimant’s CIC.

Is it common or indeed lawful to ask a landlord to effectively sign away their rights in this manner?

I also found it odd that the statement they wished us to sign, which is as far as I can tell a new innovation, references as its legal basis reg 101 of the 1987 HB regs. Weren’t these revoked when the 2006 regs came in? I understand that following such a change letters and forms can take a while to be amended, but it’s been about 9 months now, and as I say this letter seems to be a new thing…..

Sorry for the mini-rant! Any comments would be much appreciated. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Tell them to get lost, that document isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

[Anonymous]

Or alternatively sign it if it makes them happy – it still isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

[Kevin D]

I agree with both of the above responses (for content and tone).

There is simply no power for an LA to make such a request (although plenty try…..).

Regards

[petedavies]

Or ask them for a written explanation for the decision to refuse to pay to the LL (which is what this amounts to?) – the effort in writing the letter must be worth it in terms of the amusement value of the response. 😉

On a more serious note (and assuming that they get their act together with legislation), under what provisions has the request for direct payment been made, 96 or 95?

If it is 95 then there certainly is no problem.

If 96 then it may be worth checking with your legal rep – the L.A. is making a decision on a discretionary basis. It may argue that it was only prepared to exercise its discretion if it could be certain that public funds would be protected. Problem is, if this is the case [u:1deaababec]and[/u:1deaababec] it was enforceable then even if the OP is not recoverable from you under the Regs it may become enforceable as a civil debt and TTS would have no jurisdiction.

I do not think it is likely but do think you should consider the possibility and approach it as you would any decision you disagree with. I cannot imagine TTS confirming a decision with a caveat like that attached to it.

I know the CoA has considered a number of cases where public bodies have tried linking an additional requirement to the excercise of a discretion but cannot remember the outcomes. If you want them PM me and I will try to dig them out over the w/end.

[Andy Simpson]

Funnily enough this very subject was discussed at the last CIPFA conference. The Head of Service for an LA was quite open about saying that she did this along with a number of other dubious practices.

This particular LA is very near the top of the pile as far as PI scores go and I was disappointed that LA’s who try to play fair and by the rules are compared unfavourably to LA’s who come up with all sorts of (IMO) illegal scams to drive PI’s down.

To give you a flavour of what else happened, claimants had to make a telephone claim (before the rules changed to remove the requirement for a signature I might add) & had to have a home visit to collect any missing info. If the claimant wanted to bring/post the required proofs in rather than having a visit they were told that wasn’t possible.

On the plus side the phone claim & vist were conducted very quickly and the claim put in to payment ASAP. So good PI’s & arguably good customer service but you did it their way or didn’t get any benefit.

[Anselmo]

Thanks all for your responses, and for confirming what I suspected.

petedavies – It would be covered by Reg 96, it’s discretionary as the tenant is not over 8 weeks in arrears or anything like that. It’s just a case of the tenant requesting it as it is almost always much easier for everyone concerned; us, the tenant and the LA.

The strange thing is this LA have happily paid us direct for lots of tenants for years. It really seems like it’s an attempt to avoid the “new” o/p rules. Mind you, as Peter Barker suggests, it probably wouldn’t do that even if we did sign it.

I’m going to draft a diplomatic letter informally asking them why this new approach has been taken….. and to advise them to subscribe to hbinfo so they can look up the new regs!! 😉

[andyrichards]

Presumably no LA would ever try to get a claimant to sign a statement along these lines, so why do they think they can do it for landlords? When a landlord is an affected party in a decision they have all the same rights as a claimant and cannot be made to sign them away.

[seanosul]

[quote:7f77c14a22=”Andy Simpson”]Funnily enough this very subject was discussed at the last CIPFA conference. The Head of Service for an LA was quite open about saying that she did this along with a number of other dubious practices.

This particular LA is very near the top of the pile as far as PI scores go and I was disappointed that LA’s who try to play fair and by the rules are compared unfavourably to LA’s who come up with all sorts of (IMO) illegal scams to drive PI’s down.

To give you a flavour of what else happened, claimants had to make a telephone claim (before the rules changed to remove the requirement for a signature I might add) & had to have a home visit to collect any missing info. If the claimant wanted to bring/post the required proofs in rather than having a visit they were told that wasn’t possible.

On the plus side the phone claim & vist were conducted very quickly and the claim put in to payment ASAP. So good PI’s & arguably good customer service but you did it their way or didn’t get any benefit.[/quote:7f77c14a22]#

There is a regular poster on here who defends such practices as “training the claimants”; somewhat forgetting that the Local Authority is the Public Service and that they are there to serve the claimant, and [b:7f77c14a22]not[/b:7f77c14a22] the other way around.

[Kevin D]

Sean: But, isn’t that right – clmts need to be trained? 😈

For info, I am also aware of another LA that is currently refusing to issue paper claim forms, insisting on more or less the same process as described by Andy Simpson. I also have first hand knowledge of yet another LA that regularly tries to refuse claims from clmts on state benefits – insisting that the only way to claim is via CMS. The second LA only backs down when the clmt is fortunate enough to have enough knowledge, or has a rep who won’t be so easily defeated.

Both LAs have access to this board & will probably see this. I do not shirk from stating that, in my view, such practices are despicable (oh, and unlawful). One day, just maybe, those LAs will reap what they have sown. Guess I’ll now have to add those LAs to the list that won’t be running to employ me any time soon :).

On that happy note, have a nice day…..

[peterdelamothe]

“and to advise them to subscribe to hbinfo so they can look up the new regs!!”

Good idea!

A large number of the Local Government Ombudsman staff are registered on HBINFO incidentally. Plus certain Social Security Commissioners, auditiors ….

Just had to laugh at the thought of going before a certain Tribunal Chair to explain that although the law states optherwise, “look Chair, the landlord has signed this piece of paper”. Priceless.

[Author]

Posts