Has anyone contested a decision in relation to the above being treated as capital?

I've got a Client who has 25000 invested in a Bond through Barclays Bank, but the LA, although not having looked at whether the capital is still 'owned' by the claimant, have just treated the claimant as having capital over 16000.

I've checked the meaning of a Bond, and Wikipaedia confirms it is considerd a debt security, and owned by the individual/company it is given to. My client cannot, unless she dies or is made bankrupt, withdraw any of this money until it matures in 2 years, and the Bank confirm she is no longer the owner of the money until it matures.

Thanks for any inspiration given.

I can see two possibilities. The bond may still have a saleable value. Also, has the LA treated the bond as "notional capital", possibly deciding your client has deliberately converted the monies into something that could not be counted in order to obtain benefit?

What she owns is what is called a "chose in action", that is a legal right you can sue on. In essence it is a debt owing to her, but not yet payable. Debt advisers know only too well that there are companies who make their money by buying up bad debts from other businesses for a song, and then seeing how much they can recover on them. This legal right to capital in the future is something that can be sold and traded and has a market value.

The fact that future rights in property can be capital for the purposes of benefit law is evident from several of the forms of excluded capital, like the capital value of an insurance or pension policy, and reversionary interests. If they didn't count as capital you wouldn't need to exclude them.

I've already addressed the deprivation idea, glad to say, there is none. The capital isn't being treated as notional, but as actual capital. The LA is really just treating this as a straight forward capital exceeds case, the availability of it seems to have just been ignored. I've drafted a further submission, as this is going to Tribunal, confirming that the capital isn't available and that it should not be treated as owned by the claimant. I would be nice to have a Commisioner's decision to submit as well, but they do appear to be non existent.

Bear in mind, just because it isn't immediately available, there may still be a value. For example, say it has a face value of £25,000, but can't be directly realised for 2 years. However, "a person" is prepared to offer £20,000 for the right to the money to be realised in 2 years. That means the bond has a real world value, now, of £20,000.