The brief question is, if a person claims housing benefit and his/her spouse does not have a national insurance number, is the housing benefit department responsible for arranging the interview for the spouse to apply for one? Meanwhile, keeping the housing benefit claim open until s/he gets one? Under the Social Security Administration Act 1992, both members of a couple must have a N.I. number for one of them to claim housing benefit. But who is responsible for arranging the N.I. number interview?

The details of the case are:
I have a male client aged 70, originally from Yemen. He has been in Britain since c.1956 and now has British citizenship. His English is reasonably fluent but he has a limited vocabulary and has never learned how to read and write in any language. As a result, he has no access to written information and his understanding of benefit rules is more limited than most. He gets Pension Guarantee Credit, State Retirement Pension and Attendance Allowance.
In February he brought a new wife from Yemen to live with him (his first wife died some years ago.) He understood that she was to have "no recourse to public funds " and he has to support out of his own income for at least two years. But his interpretation of this was that he should not tell any "authorities" about her because they would think he was trying to claim benefits for her. So, he didn't tell the Pensions Service or the Housing Benefit Department that she was with him.
The Housing Benefit Department found out about her when he moved house at the end of August and had to make a new claim. They sent him a letter saying they refused to process the claim because his wife "wasn't entitled" to a national insurance number and was not allowed to have recourse to public funds.
We appealed this decision. We were not helped, at the hearing, by having a chair who was clearly confused about the law relating to the issue. The chair rightly threw the "public funds" issue out of the window. Since Mr. Ali is on Pension Credit, he is entitled to full housing benefit anyway and his wife's presence is not giving him any extra public funds. But the chair refused to address the issue of whether the HB Department should have arranged a N.I. No. interview for Mrs. Ali and whether Mr. Ali was given information about getting her a national insurance number in a form that he could understand. He said it was not within his remit. (This was after I'd had a somewhat heated debate with the presenting officer about whether Mr. Ali had been given adequate information about what was wrong with his housing benefit claim; and the fact that nobody had bothered to inquire whether he can read and write English or had used an interpreter.)
In the appeal papers, The Housing Benefit department used a Court Of Appeal decision SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WORK AND PENSIONS v WILSON <2006> EWCA Civ 882; commissioners decision R(H)7/06. This case law doesn't really support their position. In this case, the HB department concerned arranged a N.I. number interview for the foreign-born spouse when her (British) husband went on to Income Support and claimed housing benefit. My argument was that the Liverpool HB department should have done the same, not simply knock back the claim on a false assumption.
The chair refused to address this point, I suspect because he wasn't sure of the law on it.
He failed the appeal because Mrs. Ali did not have a national insurance number AT THE TIME her husband made his new claim for housing benefit. (Mrs. Ali had gained a national insurance number through the Jobcentre by the time of the appeal because she now has a part-time job for a few hours a week. It doesn't pay enough to take away more than a small fraction of Mr. Ali's Guarantee Credit and we've made a new claim for housing benefit based on a change of circumstances.)
However, I'm very angry at what I see as an unjust result. I intend to try to take the appeal to a social security commissioner. But I'm also looking into suing the HB Department for negligence and racial discrimination!

The LAs responsibility where a claimant or partner has no NINO is limited to the issuing of form DCI1(LA) to Jobcentreplus.

The issuing, or otherwise, of a NINO is then a matter to be resolved between the DWP and the claimant/partner. The LA has no part in that process.

From the guidence manual;

"If a claimant has not been issued with a NINO, does not know what their NINO is or if the LA is not satisfied that the NINO given belongs to the claimant, a form DCI 1(LA) should be completed and passed to the appropriate DWP Area Central Control Unit, who will carry out the necessary checks and advise the LA of the outcome.

All NINO enquiries including the issue of NINO cards must be referred to the local Jobcentre Plus office, Jobcentre or Social Security office that has responsibility for the allocation of NINOs, including NINOs for pensioners."

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to know.