Overpayment - “Waiting To Hear” about a Tax Credits claim box ticked in form, yet now O/p is alleged for failure to disclose award.

There was a HB/CTB case where exactly the same principle was at issue in respect of JSA.  You won’t like the outcome - the (then) Cmmr found firmly in favour of the LA - CH/4043/2005.  In summary, a LA is entitled to decide a claim in the knowledge a claim for another benefit is outstanding and, further, the clmt has an overriding duty to notify the LA of the award of such benefit.

Depending on the facts, that doesn’t necessarily preclude arguing the LA has made an error causing the o/p.  However, even if you cross that hurdle, it’s my experience that Tribunals *usually* find the clmt has contributed to the cause of the overpayment by failing to notify the LA of the actual award of Tax Credits.  That will render any HB/CTB overpayment being recoverable, irrespective of any moral argument.  There may be mileage in obtaining the notification letters to check the instructions contained within them.

I suppose the problem is that “waiting to hear” tells you nothing about how much you might get, or even how likely it is that this outstanding application will in fact result in an award. So it isn’t really telling them anything from which they can deduce how your HB is going to be affected.

I know, but in saying one is “waiting to hear”, one has put the Council on notice that a claim has been made. What is the point of them asking that question in their official form, if they are not to act on that information in some way?. Interestingly they didn’t seem to have any problem in the fact that my client was also waiting to hear about Widowed Mother’s Alllowance at the time!. My letter to them was, well, stiffly worded, and a copy posted straight to the M.P. for good measure!. I was pretty fuming at their thuggish behaviour towards her. Hopefully they will waive the decision to recover, but all suggestions of case-law would be most welcome :o)

Your point is fair to make Tony, yes. In our case the situation was not as described however, as in fact my client did go and bring bank statements etc. in to the Council on other occasions after this, but says she never got a notification letter from the T.C.O., yet the bank statements should have showed the award. I have requested copies of these. She no longer needed our service before the T.C. award had been made, only having approached us again following the recent decision.

John P. Colegate - 15 December 2010 03:11 PM

...my client did go and bring bank statements etc. in to the Council on other occasions after this.. (snip)....yet the bank statements should have showed the award.

The crux here is the purpose of providing the bank statements.  Unless the provision was for the express purpose of notifying the LA of a particular source of income, that again won’t, in itself, be sufficient to constitute notification of that source of income.

A test I sometimes apply is this:  if “winning” an appeal was the yardstick, who would I prefer to represent at Tribunal?  Based on the info given so far, it would be the LA.

Hmm, I understand your point, but I would still prefer to represent the Appellant morally in this scenario. I also know she provided bank statements as demonstrating income, so anyone who looked at them and did not pick up a T.C. award would have been missing information which was before them. Anyway, I need yet to see the statements I have requested copies of from the Council. Thanks for all comments so far, I will post more on here when more is known.

If you are going to use the argument that the income was shown on the bank statements you need to be aware of CH/69/2003.

9.  It may, as the claimant submits, be reasonable to assume that “satisfactory evidence” relating to his bank account was provided by the claimant before his renewal claim was determined.  However, quite apart from the fact that I am not satisfied that the tribunal was bound so to assume, I am wholly unable to accept that such evidence as may have been submitted was capable of amounting to disclosure of the claimant’s receipt of disablement benefit payments.  Even if it is assumed that the claimant submitted a statement in the form that has been produced to me, the local authority were entitled to act on the basis that it had been produced as evidence of the capital held in the account.  There was no duty on the local authority to analyse the payments into the account in case they revealed undisclosed income.  Furthermore, even if there were such a duty, and even if such an analysis were possible, and even if the local authority erred in awarding housing benefit and council tax benefit before the claimant had been asked to explain the credits to his account, there would still not have been an “official error”, because the claimant would have contributed to the error by failing to disclose his receipt of disablement benefit when expressly asked to do so on the claim form he had completed.

Yes indeed J Membury.  I repped CH/69/2003 and I have to say I really did think I was pushing it at the time.  However, I think the current case would have a better chance since you can distinguish from CH/69/2003 in that statements in that case were requested as evidence of capital as opposed to income in yours.  All in all though I think you will struggle

CH/0603/2004 is probably a closer match.  In CH/69/2003, the statement at issue was a “mini-statement”, not showing the source(s) of payments into the account.  If citing one of these two CDs, I’d be inclined to cite both on the basis that a more rounded view will be effected (bearing in mind the duty on ALL parties to assist the Tribunal and not take a selective, adversarial, stance).

I agree that this case can be distinguished, just wanted to make certain the potential problems were understood.