I just saw a client who is without NINO and without leave to remain.
She was widowed in 2009 and tried to apply for Bereavement Benefit and a NINO (several times)
She has one NINO refusal letter dated 30 7 09 where is says her application was refused bec she failed to provide sufficient evidence of her right to work.
Bereavement Benefit was refused on 1 9 09 'because her claim was not accompanied by a statement of her NINO together with sufficient information of evidence to confirm that he NINO belongs to her.
This claim may be treated non-defective provided she provides evidence of her NINO together with sufficient with sufficient information of evidence to confirm that he NINO belongs to her within one month of date of notification of this decision.
The back page explains her appeal rights.
After reading some other posts on this discussion forum (about CH/4085/27 ) and looking at Wilson @ para 39 something , it seems to me there are grounds for appealing the benefit decision and I was going to try putting in a late appeal.
Does anyone know any other arguments in support of an appeal, or are there any problems I have overlooked, or has CH/4085/2007 been set aside?

have you seen this thread?

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=4073&mesg_id=4073&page=

and why does she not have leave to remain? is that aspect correct?

Hi Claire
Yes, that's the thread I had seen, I just wondered whether it would work for this client, too, or whether that case had been set aside.
As far as I know, client came as a visitor over 10 years ago, then never applied for any other leave, even after she got married, and then applied in June 2009 (under long-term residency concession).

ooops. hope she's getting some good immigration law advice! can't help further on the NINO front.

i would put in a late appeal. there are no residence or presence conditions for bereavement benefit.

having looked at the claim-form on-line i very much doubt that a 'defective claim' decision could be correct, and a refusal of NiNo on 'right to work' grounds, i think, applies to applications for NiNos for employment purposes, not benefit purposes. this distinction is explicitly indicated in the SNAP guide (see link), which relates to employment related NiNo applications, although i'm not entirely certain of current procedures for NiNo applications.
www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snbt-04281.pdf

can't see that your client can be legally deprived of bereavement allowance entitlement on the basis outlined in your post, and CH4085/07 is relevant esp. para 27.

had a quick look at the DMG - very poor and thin guidance imo, and the decision on your case may have been reached by the DM following it - good job it's not law, eh? : )

Update on this:
I have now been informed by the Bereavement Benefit office that the client has been awarded a national insurance number and tha they are in the process of calculating her benefit.

Bereavement benefits can even be paid to people living permanently abroad who have never been to the UK - I have seen a number of cases involving widows in the Inidan subcontinent whose husbands worked in Britain. Proving marriage (especially in polygamous cultures) can be very interesting!

good! but one heck of a delay! back in the old DHSS local office days, widows benefits, for that was what they were called then, were treated as urgent priority - - the event in the person's life was the death of a spouse, and it's a matter of simple human respect... this was back in the days when civil servants were expected to treat the public with respect...

it seems this national insurance number malarkey is causing enormous problems...it really needs to be tackled, but what is the best way? maybe only the public can bring back some common sense to these issues, which have become so remote and so far removed from the powers that be that they think they can defy gravity...

"maybe only the public can bring back some common sense to these issues, "

but not until enough individual members of the public are affected by it all; most have a NINO, and won't have to wrestle with the benefits system, and if if they do, will think all is blissful until some jealous person dibs them in for having a motability car, or whatever....

sorry, rant subsiding.....

yep - the public lack focus and organisation, and knowledge and awareness... they also lack a democratic structure for holding the chiefs to account, - this might be the only way public services can be turned around and re-claimed for the people.

by the time enough people are feeling the pain that's passed to the lower end of the food chain, it will be too late. this isn't how 'proportionality' is meant to work...

ah well...there's this facebook group called 'an arbitrary number of people demanding that some sort of action be taken' - not sure if this link works -
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109723099066990#!/group.php?gid=59306991210

as a facebook group, that's fairly pointless as it is not issue specific.

there are issue specific ones that have had an effect, so if FB is a good campaigning tool (which IMHO it CAN be) any group needs to focus on ONE thing

thus allowing people to post on that signle topic, and stuff on other topic should be directed to other issue specific group.

then MP's can be pointed at that particular group for examples of the problems the particular point causes...

heh! it may be a good campaigning tool - i've barely got to grips with it, as a newbie - but i liked the irony... : )

i recall that tony suggested a facebook group some while ago, and didn't receive a great response...maybe the time wasn't right...

maybe we just have to get really aggravated, and then "we'll hit 'em with a tee-shirt campaign", as dave rimmer once said, when the polymorph struck on red dwarf...: )

i know one facebook group that did have an impact and is still campaigning on a single issue - gathered some internationally famous names in the particular field for the cause - but hasn't won the overall battle and doesn't have to contend with the democratic process in relation to its particular cause...it was started by someone with contacts and those contacts had contacts and so on...

whether it would work in a benefits context is a whole other ball game, and the particular issue would have to be one that everyone could see to be an issue with an unfair unintended result....