I have a client who has been waiting over 6 weeks for his CTC following his separation from his former partner. They each have care of one of their children. Ex has had her CTC for a few weeks already but my client's apparently cannot be paid because the specialist investigation team has 'taken an interest' in the case because he has moved from a joint to a single claim.

Has anyone else come across this before? I can see no reason why there would be any suspicion - both have informed the TCO of the separation and both have made single claims. It seems unfair that one of them has had to wait whilst the other hasn't.

A year or two ago I had a similar hold up with a claim for Chb/CTC. . I was told that a random selection of new lone parent claims were selected for special investigation - more of an audit process than any specific suspicion about the individual claimant - and that if your claim is in this process, it will be delayed. There didn't seem to be much that could be done apart from making the usual complaints and representations about urgency and hardship.

Thinking about it, that sounds like whats happened here. Thanks for that.

I had this with a new claim for tax credits about a year ago. The client was an EU national who had never claimed anything in the UK before, so I wondered if that was why they were looking into it, but they said that it was just a random sample. It held up the claim by about 3 -4 months. The contact dealing with the claim from the Investigations team was actually quite helpful to talk to over the telephone - there was a benefit from having a named individual with a direct line number dealing with the claim.