Terms & Conditions

[walmslm]

Please could people offer interpretations!

A claim is suspended on, for example the 10th October 2006, however payments have only been made up until the 25th September 2006

No further information is supplied so in one calendar month the decision is made to terminate the claim

Does the LA terminate from the Monday following the date the claim was suspended (10th October) thus paying out a further 3 weeks benefit

I believe this to be correct due to the fact that DMA Reg14 specifically states the entitlement ends on the day “ON which the payments or reduction were so suspended” and not FROM which payments were suspended

[markp]

I suppose the real question is from when the payments are deemed to have been suspended. No payment has been made from 26.9.06 although the claim was only suspended on 10.10.06 so the HB payments have, in effect, been suspended from 26.9.06. The CTB claim, if appropriate, would, more than likely, have a different suspension date.

I would consider the termination date for HB to be 26.9.06 and pay nothing further.

However it may depend on the actual reason for the suspension in the first instance. Any chance of further details?

Ready to be shot down in flames!!

Do I know what I'm doing? The jury's out on that........................

[Kevin D]

There is another option….

Given that the clmt has failed to respond, howabout drawing an inference from 25 Sep 06?

Regards

[Anonymous]

I can see how it is arguable that you did not suspend payment “on” 26 September. By the same token, is it really the case that you suspended payments “on” 10 October? Was a payment due on that date? If not, then perhaps all that happened was that you resolved to suspend further payment next time one fell due, but the actual suspension did not happen until a scheduled payment was held back.

I think if you read the suspension and termination provisions as a whole, in particular the provisions for reinstatement, then it is clear that the natural meaning of termination from the date “on” which payments were suspended is that the suspended payments are never reinstated: the claimant forfeits entitlement to the suspended payments. Reinstatement and termination are the two alternative outcomes when payments are suspended.

[Anonymous]

[quote:95b3f965f9=”Peter Barker”] I think if you read the suspension and termination provisions as a whole, in particular the provisions for reinstatement, then it is clear that the natural meaning of termination from the date “on” which payments were suspended is that the suspended payments are never reinstated: the claimant forfeits entitlement to the suspended payments. Reinstatement and termination are the two alternative outcomes when payments are suspended.[/quote:95b3f965f9]

The primary legislation uses the phrase “shall cease to entitled to the benefit from a date not earlier than the date on which payments were suspended” (the regs are similar). This does not mirror the reinstatement parts, which simply talk about reinstatement of payments, rather than a decision about entitlement. So I don’t see why the reinstatement parts of the regs would have any bearing on the termination part as they are talking about different things.

The question in deciding when benefit entitlement ceases according to this phrase is to work out what “the date on which payments were suspended” is.

You could argue that when you make two-weekly payments to a claimant, that payments are suspended after you make each payment until when you make the next one. That would then justify entitlement ceasing at the end of the last payment before suspension.

The problem with this is that it is using the word “suspend” in a very strange way. If you are paying off a loan in regular instalments, then clearly you still count as making payments inbetween each payment; you have not “suspended” your payments you are just waiting until the next one is due. Although you are paying amounts in discrete chunks there is a continuity there that is obscured by the way in which the payments are made. Similarly, you don’t have to be on the verge of making the next payment before it makes sense to suspend making payments.

I would suggest that the word suspension has to be taken as meaning a suspension of the intention to make any further payments and therefore I can’t see how “the date on which payments were suspended” can mean anything other than the date on which you decided to suspend any further payments.

I agree that I don’t think this is what they intended it to mean, but I do think it’s what it says.

[walmslm]

Thanks for your interpretations. It seems that both ways of ending entitlement can be justified depending on your interpretation of the regulation. I think we are going to go down the line of terminating from the date that payments have been paid up to not the date that the claim was actually suspended on our software.

Just one final point however – if we do as above I presume everyone agrees that for CTB where payments have been made till the end of the financial year entitlement would end from the Monday following the date the suspension was applied. Therefore you may have the situation where HB and CTB would have different termination dates?

[Darren W]

Would not the reason for the Suspension be taken in to account. For example if we get told that someone had an increase in wages but no further details, we would suspend and request further information. If when the information then comes in we find out that they are no longer entitled to benefit, we would end the claim from the Monday following the increase.

The only time we would need to decide ourselves what date to end the claim from, would be if we got no further information. In that situation I would say we should end the claim from the paid to date. That is because we do not know when the change took place and the claimant failed to let us know. It would then not make sense to say, you had a change which we found out about, we wrote and asked for further information which you failed to provide, so we are going to end your claim but pay you some more money for the period between the date we last paid you and the date that we found out about your change.

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