I have a client who moved into a co-operative in aug 03. He owned his previous home, but due to circumstances had to put it up for sale. He applied for housing benefit and his claim was not processed because he could not provide details of what profit he woould have from the sale of his house. His claim was cancelled in October 03 and the reason given was that he did not respond to request for information. However as the sale had not taken place he could not provide the information requested. The sale of the property did not take place un 28 Jan 04. There was insufficient profit from the sale to have any bearing on the housing benefit claim. A request was made for backdating the housing benefit claim. I also commented that it was unreasonable not to process the claim and as a result cancel the claim, as it was a request for information that could not have possibly been provided. The only response regarding this was that it was not unreasonable, to delay processing a claim, if the dept is required to seek clarification on any information outlined on any application. Any comments and advice would be welcome.

Did your client tell the Council that he had not yet sold his house?

The Council would have had to disregard any capital value for at least 26 weeks in those circumstances.

I would argue that there is no need for a claim for backdating, and the original claim can still be decided

The time limits for providing information are elastic and can be extended retrospectively.

I would be arguing that the reason given for not deciding the original claim was totally unreasonable - whilst councils are entitled to ask for all relavent information appertaining to the claimants circumstances, they cannot delay a claim by reason of not recieving a reply to a hyperthetical question to which it was impossible to give an answer.

Secondly, what were the council intending to do with the information even if the claimant had conjured a figure out of thin air? They couldn't use it in calculating the claim, because whatever figure was dreamt up didn't really exist anyway. All they needed to calculate entitlement was proof of Income and savings as of the date of the claim.

Whether there was going to be sufficient profit on the eventual sale, and how that profit would affect the HB claim would be something to be decided, would be something to be decided at a date in the future, as and when any profit materialised.

Thirdly, is not the value of any property owned ignored for the first 26 weeks of a claim, if the claimant can show that steps have been taken to sell it on the open market?

As food for thought, many HB departments seem to becoming more concerned about performance statistics than claimants - to put it politely there does seem to be an undue haste to dispose of claims one way or another, so that the quarterly figures look good - this is the downside of performance related league tables.......

The point to make here is that, even if the Council required a valuation of the property in question, it is for them to obtain that valuation. There is an established procedure for doing this, through the Valuation Office of the Inland Revenue (the DWP pick up the tab for this service, not the councils). The amount of capital to take into account is the value minus any outstanding mortgage and other legal encumberances.

This whole case does seem very strange in that there will obviously be cases where the value of a property has to be taken into account as capital, but it is clearly absurd to wait for that property to be actually sold before that value can be determined. You clearly cannot have a situation where a claim for benefit lies undetermined because the claimant has an interest in some property which has not been sold. I make this point partly because I think the earlier replies are a little misleading in that they suggest that a property can never count as capital until it is sold, which is not the case (though I take the point that the 26-week disregard seems appropriate in this case - and the 26 weeks can be extended if it is reasonable to do so).

The valuation process I referred to does require some information from the claimant - I just wonder if that is what the holdup is. If not then the Council's actions seem rather bizarre (God...I hope it isn't mine!)

Thanks for your replys. I have spoken to my client and he has informed me he stated at the outcome of the H.B. claim that his house was being put up for sale. I contacted the H.B. office and I have been informed that claimants in these circumstances would be sent out a form in which they had to provide details of the valuation of the proprty. I was therefore interested to read Andy Richards point about the council having to obtain this evaluation. I have not seen these evaluation requests before and I have asked the Local office to send me a copy.