It depends ….
If you mean that you have made an overpayment decision by reference to periods of entitlement going back over a decade, the decision is made now under the new Regs, in particular those dictating from whom the overpayment is recoverable. If the claimant is appealing against your view that the overpayment is recoverable, or that it is recoverable from him, the current Reg is the one that applies.
If the dispute concerns the decision-making framework – whether there are grounds to revisit old decisions – again, the current decisions and appeals Regs apply.
But if the claimant is disputing the decisions on entitlement from which the overpayment has been calculated, the relevant Regs are the ones that applied at the time – the 1987 Regs as frequently amended up to March this year, then the 2006 Regs. To justify an entitlement calculation for, say, the year 1998/99 you need to quote the relevant Regs as they stood at that time.
A quick way to summarise it is to say:
– substantive entitlement is based on the Regs as they were at the time
– the business of deciding entitlement (icnluding decisions on overpayment recoverability) is done under the Regs that apply at the time the decision is made
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