Appears to be a practice at Inland revenue of adding arrears into current awards instead of seperating them. This will obviously inflate the weekly amount of tax credits in payment and thus impact on income for other means tested benefits eg reducing or losing entitlement. Clients will be unaware of how much is arrears.

Is this a common practice elsewhere as this policy should be challenged? We have seen previous award notices that did seperate arrears.

Secondly we have been told that people are being refused free school meals for children because they are not in receipt of IS/IBJSA. Appears to be no mention of entitlement for clients getting CTC or PC is this happening elsewhere?

at a tax credits course run by ferret recently it was said that any arrears or under/overpayments that happen mid year are not seen as actual arrears or overpayments at all, but ADJUSTMENTS to PREVENT a "likely overpayment" at final reconciliation and therefore the normal rules about under/overpayments doesnt apply. For example the thing about HB having to treat arrears through an underpayment as capital does not apply because its an adjustment to the annual award spread over the year rather than an o'p as such. the rules only apply to arrears payments or overpayment recovery after final reconciliation at financial year end. therefore other benefits have no option but to look at the current figure, whether or not it includes "arrears" (because theyre not really arrears....). This all seems very unfair and a product of the mismatch between the concept of an annual award and weekly benefits. so if anyone thinks this may be wrong i will be very happy to have it explained to me that i got the wrong end of the stick.