It's late on friday and I can't think so I thought I'd see if anyone else could answer it for me !

Scenario is:-

Female tenant terminates tenancy in September 06 and so HB ends. She leaves her partner in occupation. He is not joint tenant and as far as we are aware has never been registered as living there.

Female tenant was claiming HB for past 6 years and he says he can prove he has lived there for that time and been working full time. We don't believe she would have put him down on HB claim.

Question is do we have duty to inform Hb of this and so cause massive overpayment for female now ex tenant.

Thanking you kindly

Ade

Who is your client and what do your professional confidentiality guidelines say?

CPAG handbook contains some useful info about the powers of local authorities to make enquiries in their chapter on fraud (p 1100). If your organistation is not one they have power to ask, then I am quite sure you don't have to volunteer the information.

If the guilty person is not your client then it is a matter of taste and you may prefer to report it, if at all, anonymously.

We aren't in the same league as money laundering here - yet.

Brigid

Interesting issue. The wording of HBR 88 (& HBR 75 previously) seems to be clear that the duty only extends to:

a) changes that a person "...might reasonably be expected to know might affect the claimant´s right to, the amount of or the receipt of housing benefit"; AND

b) "at any time between the making of a claim and a decision being made on it, or during the award of housing benefit"


If my interpretation is correct, so long as you (i.e. the Housing Association) didn't know AND could not reasonably have been expected to know of the change(s) at the time of the claim through to the end of the award, then you had no duty to notify the LA.

The tricky part is that the L/L doesn't actually have to know - it is enough for the LA if it is found that it was reasonable to expect the L/L to know.

Regards

NB: If an overpayment was to eventually be raised, all sorts of other issues arise - such as what legislation applies when? i.e. If the decision is made on the basis of the regs from 10 Apr 2006, do the April 06 rules about targets & recovery apply to the WHOLE overpayment period? Or, for periods where there was different legislation at the time, should it be THAT legislation that is applied? This is currently a "hot issue" in HB/CTB circles. Luckily, I have the luxury of not having to draw conclusions - so far .