Combined AA with PC - where does a change of circs need to be declared

Does anyone know what instructions are given to claimants about reporting change of circumstances when their AA becomes combined with their PC?

I have an overpayment appeal in which the PS have provided copies of letters indicating what the claimant was told for both the AA and PC they received as separate payments in the early 2000s.

The AA was then combined with the PC in to one payment but the PS cannot state what, if any, instructions were sent to the claimant about who now should be informed of a change of circumstance. In a great example of illogical thinking, the PS then state that therefore the claimant still had a duty to declare to both DWP (for AA) and PS(for PC).

They may well be right - but I cant help thinking the claimant would have been sent some new instruction telling them this, or that they had to just tell PS for e.g. Ofc, PS cant find the letter they sent to the claimant telling them they will now get one payment.

Cheers

A good question. I was initially going to write “it’s obvious - the claimant was told to tell the department that awarded the benefit when s/he signed the declaration”. However, I think it’s phrased “I will tell the department that pays my Attendance Allowance”. If this is so, who indeed pays it? It appears to be TPS, but it will come from the DBC budget, so who is paying it? Hinchey tells us it is the specific department, not just “the DWP”.

If somebody came to me asking who to inform about a change in care needs, of course I would advise that it is the AA department of the DBC to contact. If there was a change in income, I’d advise contact with TPS.

I don’t recall having ever seen a document clarifying the point, though. If an award letter has been received in the meantime, during the period payments were combined, these may have included instructions regarding to whom to report changes.

Did your client tell the wrong department when his/her circumstances changed?

What’s been overpaid, AA or PC?

Thanks for the replies.

The claimant was overpaid both PC and AA. PS backed off on the PC overpayment as there was no notification of the change in entitlement decision (obv they may come back again). PS have not backed off on the AA overpayment (although again there is no proof of the notification of the entitlement decision, which we are arguing also).

To compound the difficulty, the claimant has reported short term memory loss. There may be an argument he did not even know where he was to be able to report a change in circumstances. I was looking down the route of what clear instructions had he been given for reporting, once his benefits had been combined. In the end, it was someone else who actually reported he was in hospital, not the claimant.

The golden rule is that a claimant must notify the office that the entitlement letter comes from.  This is usually the office that issues the benefit and that’s not necessarily the one that administers the final payment.  It is possible, but I’ve never seen it, that a particular section of the office is indicated, i.e. the Income Support section.  That information may later be modified by a further letter saying something different, such as please tell office a or b, but, again, I’ve never seen that either.

This is slightly different from Hinchy in that it appears in your client’s case no part of DWP was told and no part of DWP could have detected on its own initiative that the claimant was in hospital.  Whereas Hinchy was about one DWP office not automatically knowing as a matter of law something that had happened in a different DWP office.

I think it’s time Hinchy was revisited as the technology has moved on since then.  DLA and means tested benefits are shown on the same CIS aren’t they, and there have been initiatives like “Tell us once”.  These days it ought to be reasonable to assume that if one DWP office stops your DLA that will automatically be picked up by another office handling your means tested benefits, whatever it says on your decision letters.

Trouble is someone will have to battle all the way to the Supreme Court to get Hinchy modernised won’t they?