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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Decision making and appeals  →  Thread

MR bizarreness….

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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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Total Posts: 1116

Joined: 25 February 2014

Had to share….

Client referred to me due to IS (claimed on basis of incapacity) termination and overpayment following his being absent from the UK. Facts were that client (who suffers from considerable m/health issues) left 27/12/2013 for Egypt in search of his sister who has been missing for some 5-6 years. Her m/health issues are even more considerable. Apparently an acquaintance had seen her and passed this info onto my client via friends - as she is his only surviving relative he, understandably, felt compelled to follow this up.

Turns out he was given a bum steer, but did eventually track her down. Unfortunately, her m/health problems have deteriorated to the point where she is being held in what sounds like the equivalent of Bedlam and she didn’t recognise him.

Even more unfortunately, the state of emergency declared whilst he was in Egypt prevented internal travel and the purchase of a replacement plane ticket after the travel restrictions resulted in his missing the return flight he’d booked.

So didn’t return until 15/2/2014 and didn’t inform DWP until 17/3/2014 - IS claim had already been terminated on 14/2/2014 but I suspect continued payment of his DLA award meant he wasn’t initially aware of this.

Termination, overpayment and civil penalty notices 24/4/2014. I bung in MR on all three on 13/5/2014. Grounds on overpayment and civill penalty are;

1) No overpayment for first 4 weeks - client in a category of person entitled to receive IS whilst abroad for 4 weeks and nothing in regs to say he must notify prior to travel.

2) Intended to travel back within the four weeks but physically prevented from doing so - and then physically prevented from disclosing this. Therefore no failure to disclose as such a failre requires disclosure actually being possible.

The last one was a stretch at best, I know, but I was hoping I’d think of something better by the time we came to tribunal - or that I’d get a sympathetic judge who would fudge it.

Anyway, I get the MR decisions back at the beginning of August and it’s total victory!

Agreed no overpayment for the first 4 weeks and the remainder of overpayment non-recoverable on the basis that (and I quote);

“I have considerd all the evidence and I can see that our office records show that on 14/2/2014 our department was aware that you had gone abroad, but there is no record of who told us this information. Also there is no record of when or how we received this information.

Therefore, I have decided that there is no evidence held to confirm that you had failed to disclose that you were going abroad.”

Just occasionally the DWP’s bizarre leaps of logic can work in a claimant’s favour….. :)