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CIS 4422/02 is helpful -
"The tribunal which dealt with the case ... in my judgment erred in law in failing to identify and deal with a relevant distinction between a claimant’s obligation to notify to his local benefit office as a “change of circumstances” the actions of another office of the Department for Work and Pensions, and a case such as the present where, on the tribunal’s own finding, everything that affected the claimant's benefit was being dealt with inside the same local office. In the latter case it is established on well founded authority that the requirement to disclose material changes to that office does not mean the claimant has gratuitously to notify it of the actions of its own staff."
also CIS 1887/02
" 21. It is also in my judgment a principle established beyond question that for the purposes of section 71 there is no “failure to disclose” where the material fact in question is already known to the person or office to whom, under the principle laid down by the House of Lords in Hinchy, notification would otherwise have to be made. This too I take to be axiomatic and not called in question by anything said in the recent decision of their Lordships. It may be the kind of point Lord Hoffmann had in mind when he said “a disclosure which would be thought necessary only by a literal-minded pedant … need not be made”, though perhaps a true pedant would be the least likely to think disclosure necessary in such circumstances, taking the (accurate) view that there can be no question of “disclosure” to a person or entity of something that he or it knows already."
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This is official error, pure and simple.
IFW is the condition of client's entitlement to IS, and the administrative arrangement is that the IB section 'manages' the incapacity claim for the IS section, who are trained on IS not IB. This means that they ensure medical evidence is submitted, consider the incapacity question, refer for medicals etc. The IB section also used to take responsibility for payments of combined Is/IB or IS/CREDITS ONLY cases... i'm no longer sure how that works now that ACT payments have been introduced, but without a doubt it is essential that the IB section are informed by the IS section of the IS interest in the claim - without it, the IB section cannot 'manage' the incapacity claim on behalf of the IS section - they are _required_ to communicate any changes which could affect IS, with the IS section. this is not law, but standing procedural instructions, which er... stand to reason.
You would have thought that some consideration would have been given to the fact that the overpayment is due to official error at the overpayment decision stage, the reconsideration stage and the appeal writing stage, but obviously not, and what a complete wasted of tax-payers money and tribunal time.
either, the IB section failed to notify the IS section of the PCA, or the IS section failed to act on the notification it received. there is a remoter possibility that the IS section failed flag up its interest to the IB section. all are official errors which result in overpayments. i expect none of these facts are provided in the appeal submission for the tribunal, who have to decide on things like causal connections between material facts and overpayments, and whether or not events were a change in circumstances...otherwise the penny might have dropped... they ought to have established as a fact whether a notification was sent to the claimant and whether a notification was sent to IS, and if so on what date...they can't rely on "would have sent one" and a blank! - they 'would have notified' IS too if they had closed the claim correctly, and IS would have stopped paying...that didn't happen either...
Your client is being billed for failing to notify the Secretary of State that the Secretary of State had made an adverse decision on his IB claim.
Grrrr!
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