I raised this issue in the similarly titled post by Paul Sweeting a few weeks back but thought I should start a new thread.

This concerns overpayment cases where IB clients have worked for only part of an overpayment period. For example, a client works off and on for 15 weeks in a 1 year period. Should the overpayment be for the full year or only for the weeks worked?

I raised this in the previous thread as I had only appealed an overpayment decision, not the entitlement decision as well. The feedback I recieved was that I did not need to appeal the entitlement decision. I asked this after recieving a letter from tAS pointing out that there was no entitlement appeal.

At appeal (last week) the first thing the chair argued is that I cannot challenge the amount of the overpayment to reduce it to the weeks worked only as the entitlement decision was not under appeal. The logic seems to be that once the client started work then the claim to IB ceased, so there was automatically on overpayment till a new claim was put in. This would be only after the client was found to be working and IB was stopped as a result of DWP actions. For the period not working the onus would be on the claimant to now prove s/he was incapable of work for that period. The appeal was adjourned for a submission from myself on this point.

I now have another case where the client worked 11 weeks between 2/02 and 11/05. Again, the same logic seems to have been applied - once the claimant works his benefit stopped and so he was automatically overpaid from then on.

I have discussed this with the PO at the appeal and with a member of the Fraud team. They are both saying that this is the normal approach even when a case is at criminal court for fraud. The PO stated that a number of tAS chairs took this approach.The Fraud guy said the DWP used to prosecute just for the weeks worked but now do it for the whole period.

Anyone else had this problem?I have some thoughts on what to put in a submission but want to make sure I am not missing something. I also want to hear of other peoples experiences with what what I guess is a common scenario.

Thanks