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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

Incapacity Benefit and Permitted Work in the 90s

wr4
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Lewes Citizens Advice Bureau

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A client is paying back an Incapacity Benefit overpayment relating to work carried out in the early 90s.  Does anybody know how I can find out what the relevant rules were at the time for permitted work?  Many months he did not work at all and for other months the maximum he worked was 80 hours.  He was under the impression that working for 16 hours or less per week was ok and that he only had to inform the Jobcentre if it was more than this. I believe things changed in 2002 but wondered if anybody knows what the situation was at that time?  The overpayment was calculated including months in which he did not work at all.

This is related to my thread about the overpayments here:
http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/7646/

Any help would be much appreciated..

[ Edited: 21 Jan 2015 at 03:44 pm by wr4 ]
Andrew Dutton
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Welfare rights service - Derbyshire County Council

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The rule prior to 8.4.2002 was Therapeutic Work. I can’t find many details so you will probably need to find a CPAG and/or Disability Rights Handbook for the relevant period.

The earliest i’ve got is 2002-03 DRH -

The work had to be under 16 hours a week to ‘improve or to prevent or to delay deterioration in the disease or bodily or mental disablement which causes incapacity for work’

or without limit on hours if it was part of a treatment programme or attending an insititution providing sheltered work.

Can’t find the earnings limit.

It came to an end on 6.4.2003.


Hoarding old books is a GOOD thing and we should do it more!

 

 

wr4
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Lewes Citizens Advice Bureau

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Thank you very much for this.. yes going to look for old books then..

Steve_h
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Welfare Rights- AIW Health

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Try asking your nearest HMRC office, they usually keep back copies and will lend them to you or donate one.

wr4
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Thanks great idea

Ruth_T
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As it happens … I have most of the CPAG books back to 1985.

However you mention an o/p of incapacity benefit dating from the early 1990s.  Incapacity benefit was not introduced until 12 April 1995.  If you post more precise details I may be able to help.

Ruth

Gareth Morgan
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CEO, Ferret, Cardiff

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We have all the regs on our CD-Rom.

nevip
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Welfare rights adviser - Sefton Council, Liverpool

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For the position on Invalidity Benefit the relevant provision as far as I can ascertain is paragraph 3 of regulation 3 of the Social Security (Unemployment, Sickness and Invalidity Benefit) Regulations 1983.

Persons deemed to be incapable of work

3.—(1) A person who is not incapable of work may be deemed to be incapable of work by reason of some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement for any day on which either—
(a)(i)he is under medical care in respect of a disease or disablement as aforesaid;
(ii)it is certified by a registered medical practitioner that, for precautionary or convalescent reasons consequential on such disease or disablement, he should abstain from work; and
(iii)he does not work; or
(b)he is excluded from work on the certificate of a Medical Officer for Environmental Health and is under medical observation by reason of his being a carrier, or having been in contact with a case, of infectious disease.

(2) A person, who at the commencement of any day is, or thereafter on that day becomes, incapable of work by reason of some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement and does no work as an employed earner or self-employed earner on that day, shall be deemed to be so incapable of work throughout that day.

(3) A person, who is suffering from some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement but who, by reason only of the fact that he has done some work while so suffering, is found not to be incapable of work by reason thereof, may be deemed to be so incapable if that work is—
(i)work which is undertaken under medical supervision as part of his treatment while he is a patient in or of a hospital or similar institution, or
(ii)work which is not so undertaken and which he has good cause for doing,
and from which, in either case, his earnings do not ordinarily exceed £22.50 a week.

wr4
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Thank you all so much for all the responses - I had not set up my notfications right - but really appreciate all this information and am making my way through it!