I wonder if anyone can see a way through this I can't

Claimants first claim to HB and CTB based on earnings etc. Paid her entitlement and then notified them of increase in wages. Official error and they increased her HB. Award notices do show wages figure going down rather than up in calculation and obviously ben increased.

Apart from this being her first claim no other reason why she couldn't suss this out from award notice.

LA have rejected appeal and are sending to Tribunal. Do you think there is any way round the fact that she should have known?

Thank you in anticipation

Its largely going to depend on the facts of the case and what the claimant actually knows or could reasonably be expected to know.

In similar cases I've argued that the complex way that income is calculated for housing benefit means that the simple figure on the calculation sheet is not necessarily. Taking into account things like earnings disregards, the additional earnings disregard, pension contribution disregards and childcare costs disregards, calculation earnings isn't straightforward. This can mean that although the figure shown on the award notice is the 'correct' one, it doesn't necessarily equate to what the claimant actually gets.

I almost always bung in the arguments that claimants are entitled to expect that there claims are dealt with properly and accurately, and that (depending on the set up of the actual award letter), its not always the case that a claimant could find a particular figure anyway, and the confusion caused by confusing layouts can contribute to the lack of understanding of the calcuation.

Thanks Tony, that was the way I was going originally. But now having seen the award notices they do clearly state a weekly earned income figure before all the disregards, other income etc. And this clearly did go down when it should have gone up.

I'm fairly new to the contract but don't think I should take this to Tribunal if there really isn't much hope or have you won arguments like this before? I would really like to find a good argument for Tribunal!

Thank you

I agree.

I haven't 'won' an appeal on that basis alone but i would certainly include the argument, unless it was clear that the client had spotted the error but didn't raise it, or had other reasons for believing the amount was OK, In which case, I probably wouldn't be repping.

I'm always aware that it's easy to loose sight of the fact that becuase we know what we're looking at - it doesn't follow that clients do. I think if I were you, I would show the award letter the client and ask her if the earnings shown are correct? If she says anything other than 'no' I would investigate further.

There's quite a bit of caselaw around this issue. If you've not dealt with this much, it will be worth your reading the notes to reg 100 in CPAG's HB/CTB legislation, which might give you other ideas.

Each case will turn on its own facts of course but have a llok at CH/2935/2005.

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/cgi-bin/sub_client/search.cgi?template1=briefcase/detail.htm&briefcase.ID_option=1&briefcase.ID=49143332288 may or may not help.

Also if your client is in a housiing association property with 4 free weeks then there would be a 48 week conversion of income which is difficult to understand at the best of times.