Has anyone come across reluctance by HB Authority to acknowledge existence of / forward appeal to TAS ? We seem to remember reading somewhere that clmt can write to Chairman asking him/her to require LA to submit appeal but TAS customer services say this route is not open as far as they know and apparently there is no time limit on how long the LA takes to send an appeal to TAS. Can this be right ?

Where an appeal is submitted to an LA, there is a DWP target that most should be forwarded to TAS within 1 month and all within 3 months.

This is also backed up by a number of Ombudsman decisions where, except where there are specific issues with a case, it is maladministration not to forward the appeal on within a month.

There is no legislative time-limit however

The issue may be different where the LA do not acknowledge that an appeal has been made.

If the LA has had a reasonable time to deal with the appeal, yes you can write to the regional chair of the TS and request directions. Your letter should include a full chronology and a copy of the apeal. Ultimatley, if the LA do not co-operate, the TS can consider the appeal without an LA submission albeit that this would be unusual and to a certain extent puts more of a burden on you to provide information to the tribunal, e.g. copies of the original claim, decision, appeal etc

If the tribunal accept that a valid appeal has been made and the LA have not dealt with it, your path to an LGO complaint would be a smooth one!

Further to Stephen's advice, we have a scrounged proforma thingy that relates to the above i.e. reg 38 (decision and appeals regs 1999) which your welcome to, having said that though, i would follow his learned advice and if you want to copy and paste bits from the proforma because its got the odd nice line and sentence.

andy

ps what is the South West study wotsit?

In addition to the tactic of writing directly to a chairman, a threat to apply for judicial review can work wonders as well. Prepare a pre-action protocol letter in the form specified in the Judicial Review Pre-Action Protocol, which can be viewed below:

http://www.dca.gov.uk/civil/procrules_fin/contents/protocols/prot_jrv.htm

Send a copy to the LA's legal department as well as the HB department and they should develop the appropriate sense of urgency.


DISCLAIMER: This is intended as a contribution to the subject-matter under discussion and is not to be relied upon as legal advice. Anyone with a similar or identical problem should consult an expert welfare rights adviser or a solicitor with expertise in welfare rights law.

A couple of Cmmrs' decisions that may be of interest....

In CH/3497/2005 (para 3), the Cmmr pointed out that LAs are expected to submit appeals to TTS within 28 days - this being in line with Ombudsman recommendations. But, as already ponited out above, the 28 days "rule" has no legislative basis.

In CH/2812/2005, the Cmmr found that the circumstances in that case merited an appeal being accepted by TTS, even though it effectively bypassed the LA.