Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

Hi…

Have a case where clmt had a baby in May 2005 but did not inform us until October 2005. We input child benefit income from May but deps allowance/baby family premium from October. This resulted in an overpayment.

1. Does UE apply here? cos we do have correct income details just not the correct applicable amount (‘true facts of the case’).

2. If it does apply (which negates the whole o/p story….hmm…what’s the point?) does clmt have to formally request it or should we be proactive and do it anyway? Actually not sure that out o/p letters mention UE….

Any clues?

Thanks

[Mark]

1) Yes. There is no overpayment.

2) You’re required to do it anyway.

I can’t remember which one but this very scenario was posed in a DWP circular some time ago.

You should also record the remainder of the lost benefit for the period between May and October in case another overpayment for this period arises later.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Mark for your speedy response! I’ll ‘write the damn thing off’ then…ah well…

Have a good weekend….

[Mark]

I don’t know what computer system your LA uses nor how it works – but it sounds like you may be risking unneccesary subsidy loss. Why not just recalc to enter both the child benefit and child from the same October date? Perhaps that’s what you meant anyway.

[Anonymous]

Mark – thanks for advising about the subsidy implications….I think my somewhat flippant remark to ‘write the damn thing off’ may have caused a wee bit of confusion. I hadn’t meant to do an actual write off – just my way of expressing frustration at the whole UE process and the net effect for the clmt, being no o/p – more of a ‘what’s the bally point?’ I suppose! Ah, the mysterious joys of the benefits world….

Just to confirm, I will be recalculating using relevant income & allowances as indicated in your first post.

Thanks again though for your responses…

[Jules]

I thought I’d raise this subject again as we’re trying to work out how to input these cases (we use Northgate).

We have a case where, if we input both changes going back to when the change occurs the system wants to pay a balance to the customer. We obviously don’t want to do this as the customer did not advise us about the beneficial change at the time so although we want to reduce the overpayment we don’t want to pay them any additional benefit.

The scenario is …..

Claimant receiving HB of £79.84 pw towards a liability of £82.96 pw.
They have a child in July but don’t tell us until September.
To try to award underlying entitlement, if we input both changes (including the child and child benefit) from July the system wants to award benefit of £82.96 from July – £3.12 highter than the entitlement was before the calculation of u/e.
We obviously don’t want to do this but don’t know how else to input the changes to award u/e to reduce the overpayment due to the award of Child Benefit.

Does anyone have any suggestions? How are other people dealing with this change?

I’m not sure if it’s a problem with Northgate or one that applies to other software suppliers.

[Anonymous]

We are Northgate and with child being born ie adv/dis changes it can
be a bit of a pointless exercise. But we

put on CHB from date of birth = creates o/p
then add child with notified date in Notify Start/end date but
do not tick box.

This creates huge u/p which we then do a man debit so that the amount does not go out.

[Mark]

Why not do what I suggested originally? Remember that the overpayment caused by the Child Benefit will always be less than the increase because of the child – so the underlying entitlement is guaranteed to wipe out the overpayment. Therefore, enter the Child and the Child Benefit from the same date (i.e. the date of notification). Then record somewhere that for the period from birth to notification there remains some outstanding underlying entitlement that may need to be used to reduce an overpayment arising in the future for the same period.

Emma’s solution works but I don’t see the point.

[Author]

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