EEA national - Local Authorities and Kerr

My client is an EEA national and her right to reside is dependent on her estranged partner’s work history. She is cooperating with the LA and providing what she can but it is not safe to contact her ex directly because of serious DV (the courts are involved).  Using the principles established in the case of Kerr, we asked them to check her ex- partner’s work history but they have said they can’t check DWP/HMRC records? I assume this isn’t correct and we can use Kerr for HB cases but I just wanted to check before going back to them on this point.  I am used to challenging DWP on this point and I know they have access to HMRC records, but wasn’t sure if the LA did too?

Many thanks

I don’t think LAs do have access to HMRC records in terms of taxable income, only for Tax Credits which comes through ATLAS/CIS, I think they would have to write to the NI records office which can take an age and a day to respond if at all.

Exactly what is her RTR based on? For example if it is as the primary carer of a child in education a previous joint claim for Working and Child Tax Credits may provide enough evidence on the balance of probability. This could be verified by the LA through the CIS system.

Thank you very much. We have put a Subject Access Request into the Tax Credit Office to get copies of the joint claims because she left with nothing.  It is derivative residence so I guess we’ll just have to wait for HMRC to produce the decision notices and hope for the best! Thanks again

Whilst LAs can carry out CIS checks, 99.99% of the time this is in order to establish current or past entitlement to means-tested benefit entitlement and in order to establish HB entitlement. The information on NI records is held on a separate part of CIS (so it’s not the case that once you find a particular individual you are able to access all their data) - our HB department (who are very helpful) weren’t able to tell me whether they even have access to that part of CIS. If they do, they don’t know how to use it.

As it goes, CIS checks do show periods where a claimant was in receipt of WTC - this shows up as ‘New Tax Credit’ but the CIS check does not show how much WTC was in payment. That is fine where it is the claimant that the LA is concerned with, because it should/will have received ATLAS notices specifying how much the award was. But if the LA were to check on the claimant’s ex-partner, it’s problematic - i.e. there’s not enough info to even take a guess at whether that work was genuine and effective.