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Overpayment - “Waiting To Hear” about a Tax Credits claim box ticked in form, yet now O/p is alleged for failure to disclose award.
I have a client who lost her husband about a year ago. At the time we filled in a form for H.B./C.T.B., I had wrote that she was waiting to hear about a claim for Tax Credits. She has now been told she has been overepaid because she had not declared she received Working Tak Credit. The fact that the decision had not been made following her bereavement at the time the form was filled in was not her fault. I am unsure whether they were later sent Bank Statements showing any such payments, though will check this.
What I am wondering, however, is whether anyone knows of any benefit case-law that holds that if someone has ticked the “waiting to hear” box, they can be seen to have discharged their responsibility to have declared that they have claimed something and that, in such circumstances, the Council should accept that the onus was on them to actively ask information regarding the results of the Tax Credits claim. My feeling is that “the ball was firmly in their court” morally speaking, and that it is plainly wrong for them to behave in such a thuggish way to a widow doing the best to bring up children and hold down her job. I will argue this anyway, but if anyone knows of anything to back this up, I woud be most grateful. Cheers.