My client lives with his 18 year old son. Since September 07, his son has been enrolled on a non-advanced full time course at 6th Form college and Housing Benefit assessed my clients applicable amount with his son as a dependent.

Housing Benefit have written to my client though informing him that they have now reassessed his Housing Benefit claim, putting his son as a non-dependent rather than a dependent as my client was not in receipt of Child Benefit for his son until August this year. He has been issued with a large overpayment as a result of this reassessment. I have looked up the rules on what constitutes a dependent. From my understanding is that the son only needs to be considered as a qualifying young person for CB purposes, my client does not need to actually be in receipt of it. Is this correct? If so can you let me know the regs so I can ask HB to look at their decision again.

Look at Reg 20 (1) of the HB Regs, which indicates that a person only has to be responsible for a child or young person. If there is a doubt as to whom the child or young person lives with paragraph 2 of the same reg comes into play and it is only then that entitlement to CB is looked at.

I had a similar scenario with one of my clients, where she had custody of her granddaughter but had not claimed CB. The LA agreed to include the granddaughter as a dependant child, before CB was awarded as the client had responsibility for the child, who was "normally" living with them.