I'm a VO, doing reviews at claimants' homes. I thought I had this settled, but it keeps coming back to irritate me in one way or another.

My view, in IS/JSAIB cases, is that you DON'T look at income and capital, in other words an IS or JSAIB award is no more my business than an INCAP, DLA or AA award is. Those are all the business of the DWP and it's up to them to check, review, whatever, those awards themselves. All I'm interested in, in these cases, is residency, household (especially non-deps), benefits which affect non-dep deductions (SDA, DLA-care, etc) and rent.

Pension Credit (Savings and Guarantee) are the same. And there's a further reason for not looking at income and capital in these cases (again, except for things which affect non-dep deductions), and that is that even if you DID find a change of circs and told The Pension Service about it, they wouldn't do anything about it until the claimant's Assessed Income Period was up anyway!

Any thoughts?

There are issues with AIPs, Savings Credit only cases and HB/CTB, Here capital changes can impact.