My client was on NI credits for incapacity and IS (but no IB) before failing a PCA in June. She appealed, claimed JSA pending the appeal and won her appeal in November.

She has been advised that having claimed JSA while waiting for the appeal, she must now reclaim IS to reinstate her award following the appeal.

It seems to me to be unreasonable to require a claimant to go through the rigmarole of making a new claim when the decision to discontinue the previous award has been shown to be erroneous.

And how does the client get her Disability Premium back for the full period since the date she claimed JSA? DP on these grounds cannot be included with the JSA she's had, and her new IS claim cannot be backdated to cover the full period.

Why can't the client simply be asked if she would like to stay on JSA (unlikely) or revert to IS with the department making the necessary adjustments to recover JSA payments from the backdated award?

this is wrong.

the decision disallowing IB credits and income support has been revised. the DWP must pay her arrears back to the date they decided she was capable of work. she does not need to make a new claim, she already had a claim, and the decision terminating it has been overturned by the tribunal.

the secretary of state is interfering with a decision of the tribunal.

the JSA paid pending her appeal should be treated as paid on account of IS and her arrears paid.

see reg 5 (2) of Payments on Account etc regs.

you could inform the tribunal if the DWP doesn't behave or generally raise hell about it/

jj

My client has now received all the benefit that she would have been paid had the Department gone the right way about implementing the decision of the tribunal (so she's reasonably happy) but I'm still troubled by the way she had to go about getting her money.

The department wouldn't budge from their position that she had to make a new IS claim after her successful appeal, so we made a claim. An IS award including a DP was made from the date of that claim. The JSA award that had been in payment from the date my client failed her PCA up to the date of her 'new' IS claim was left in place. Because her 'new' IS claim couldn't be backdated to fill the gap and because a DP on the grounds that the claimant has been incapable of work for 52 weeks cannot be included in a JSA award, the Department made an 'exceptional cases payment' equivalent to the DP for each week that the JSA award had been left in place.

I'm sure my client wouldn't have got her 'exceptional cases payment' without our repeated representations and I fear for other clients in the same position who have no-one to act on their behalf.

Why on earth does someone in the commonplace situation of succeeding at a PCA appeal, having claimed JSA while waiting for the appeal to be heard, have to rely on an exceptional payment to get their money back? What's exceptional about it?

The tribunal decided she was incapable of work from and including 30 June. This decision meant she was entitled to the IS that had been discontinued from that date but it equally meant that she was not entitled to the JSA she had been paid. Two supersessions, IS re-instated, JSA offset and Bob's your uncle.

The local office have ignored my letters questioning their handling of the tribunal decision so where's my next port of call? Appeals Service? Ombudsman?

hi peter

i'm not sure i can be coherent at the moment. i've been struggling all afternoon to try to summarize concisely (and failing)a complaint i would like the parliamentary ombudsman to consider, which is full of off-putting murky jurisdictional complexities, and my brain is at that point where it is ready to start dribbling down my nose.

in my case, i was unable to persuade the DWP to revise a decision which was clearly erroneous in law, even by quoting the relevant and highly significant case law, and then by threatening judicial review (which for various reasons we could not pursue in the end) and i failed to get an expedited appeal. after his inevitably successful appeal the DWP delayed paying my cclient for two and a half months, and the complaint we submitted to the CEO (over the unnecessary delay and expense of a tribunal when the decision should have been revised) ended up for investigation with one of the persons who had been involved in the actions we complained about.

worse than that, the response evidences quite appalling ignorance of the law, and suggests the routine giving of unlawful decisions on habitual residence, and i'm asking myself how it is possible to obtain remedies using legal arguments, with people so lacking in awareness of the law! what is going on?

Is the DWP aware that it administers a statutory scheme at all?

i feel as if i'm going round in circles. i think there are serious problems involving the dual administrative/formal decision making functions of the sec of state, but who am i to say?

in your case, your client is entitled to a statutory award of IS from a date awarded by the tribunal, the DWP does not understand the law, makes you jump through hoops and stresses your client quite unnecessarily in order to obtain her legal entitlement, and makes an extra- statutory payment to get round a problem its created for itself. the end result sounds like false accounting to me. maybe suits the DWP not to have its accounts signed off for years on end?

who can you complain to?
ombudsman?
president of the appeal service?
district or regional chairman?
chief commissioner?
DWP CEO? (who?)
Permanent Secretary?
a Minister?
Secretary of State?
Comptroller General?
all of them?

right now i don't know what to say, except that i would be grateful if anyone has any bright ideas...

jj

I do wish there was a 'none of the above' box on a ballot paper...

How can you force a local office to apply the law when by the time they register your complaint the office will be closed?

How can you suggest that someone paid £8k per year or whatever should be a legal expert? Or even know anything let alone care?

It is utterly baffling.