"Gobsmackedness" LMAO - a fine word indeed! I might use it...
I've had a look at IS regs 55A and 60E and it they are definitely just the relevant provisions authorised by s.74A(2). Therefore they are not a generic maintenance disregard but can only be applied where s.74A has been applied to the payment of CSM.
I still believe in my earlier interpretation and, if it's right, the SoS doesn't keep the stolen maintenance. It occurred to me that if he did, not only would that give grounds to elevate gobsmackedness to the OED, but he would also be kind of a 'reverse Robbin(g) Hood' type character. Furthermore, our most esteemed and knowledgeable colleagues, Mark Rowland and Robin White, would have mentioned it in the commentary to s.74A.
I think this provision is the bit that simply allows the SoS to recover the costs of supporting a claimant via IS/IBJSA from the child support maintenance (i.e. CSA assessed maintenance). That was after all part of the policy intention in introducting the CSA in the first place - absent parent's should be responsible for supporting children, not the state (shame the CSA weren't so gobsmackedly (is that over-use?) heavy handed, judgemental, holier-than-thou, virtual state police - it might have worked a bit better).
It's like the CSA are saying that they should have applied s.74A at the time when your client was getting IS, and had they done so, they wouldn't have paid the maintenance. That's why they say the maintenance itself has been overpaid. But in retrospect that decision can't be right because:
1) the IS has been recovered from the arrears of IB which means the SoS has incurred no cost in IS;
2) I still believe that it can only be applied where there is a current award of IS/JSA that can only be REDUCED, as opposed to reduced to nil, by the maintenance.
Tony
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