I have just found out that a tenant was not granted a request for back dating of her claim and that there is now a gap of 6 weeks. She had been working 12 hours a week and claiming J.S.A, after about a month J.S.A stopped her claim saying she was earning too much money to be getting J.S.A hardship (only 17 at the time). She submitted a new H.B form as soon as she found out.

The problem is that the gap is from 1st Dec 01 to 22nd Jan 03, which means we are out of time to appeal. However she was never informed in writing that she had been turned down. Her H.B has been a complete mess due to the fact that H.B assessed her claim incorrectly for the period she was working, taking her monthly pay as her weekly pay. Because of this i have had numerous conversations with H.B and have directly asked them about gaps in the claim and have never been told about this gap.

Also I have about 10 letters from H.B all saying different things, one day hey would inform the tenant of an overpayment on her claim and the next day they would inform her that they owed her money. The letters do not correspond to each other making it impossible to establish what is happening with the claim.

My question is, do you think there is any point writing to H.B explaining everything and asking them to re-look at the claim. I have also thought of writing to the council's complaints officer, would you advise this?

If your client made a claim for backdating but was never informed by the LA concerned of the result there is no problem with the appeal being out of time. The time limit for appeals runs from the date the LA issues its decision notice to the claimant.

In this case you just need to write to the LA stating that your client made a claim for backdating but has not yet received a decision. The right of appeal will start from the date on the decision notice.

The only problem that I can foresee is if one of these 10 letters you received from the LA is intended to be the decision on backdating. If this is the case, for the decision notice to be valid, it must include a statement as the reasons why no award has been made. If it does not contain this statement you should inform the LA that the notice is not valid for that reason and they must therefore issue a valid one. The appeal rights will start from when this valid notice is issued.

If the appeal is out of time then you could ask for an anytime revision on grounds of official error under Reg' 4 of the HB & CTB Decisions & Appeals Regs 2001.

The official error being that under Reg'72(14)(a) of the HB Gen'Regs the La must invite a new claim to HB if IB/JSA stops.

If the LA failed to do this then this is official error. This point can also be pursued at any appeal as good cause for a backdating request.

Regards
Paul