local authority are not sending appeals to tribunal service

they feel that it is not in the 'best interests' of claimants to be hit with an appeal submission in the post

their policy is to write to claimants, and give them 14 days to respond to say whether they want the appeal to proceed to trib service

the tribunal service told me that they have not recieved more than a handful of appeal submissions from this auuthority.
obviously I am concerned claimant are being denied the right to a fair trial


does anyone have experience of this practice?

ot does anyone know if the authority might even be justified in applying this procedure?

Thanks

J

If, as suggested, this is a LA policy / standard procedure, it is disgraceful. There is no legal basis on which the LA can avoid sending such appeals to Tribunal. Sure, a LA can ask for a not-duly-made appeal to be made good, but the appeal must still go to TTS even if not rectified.

Depending on the circumstances in each individual case, it *may* be possible to bypass the LA. Take a read of R(H) 01/07 (aka CH/2812/2005) and see what you think.

www.osscsc.gov.uk/aspx/view.aspx?id=2025

Taken at face value, a full (formal) complaint is absolutely justified - I'd be inclined to copy the complaint to the Ombudsman (although s/he is unlikely to get involved until/unless the LA's own procedure is exhausted).

thanks for the reference

yes - I'm definately considering an ombudsman complaint

Are there any local authority officers out there who can comment?
thanks

J

Thu 10-Jul-08 01:24 PM by Tony Bowman

I agree completey with Kevin. Sounds like your LA are aware of the successful way that the tax credit office have been denying claimants thier right to appeal. They really are very good at it!

Are there any local authority officers out there who can comment?
thanks

Most of my work is for LAs.... Irrespective of which side of the fence, my response would have been the same in both content and tone.

thanks Kevin, I wish you were working down here!

I work for a LA and I agree with Kevin unequivocally.

As the LA must undertake a re-consideration before sending an appeal to the tribunal service anyway, I don’t see anything wrong with them, where appropriate, writing to obtain more evidence and giving the claimant 14 to provide it…
However;
If the claimant either does not reply, or does reply, but the LA confirms the earlier decision, them the appeal MUST be forwarded to the appeals service. No IFs no BUTs (to paraphrase a recent advert)

"They feel that it is not in the 'best interests' of claimants to be hit with an appeal submission in the post"

....however sympathetic they may feel towards their customers, they do not have the power to make that judgement, nor to......

........"write to claimants, and give them 14 days to respond to say whether they want the appeal to proceed to trib service"

Once an appeal is lodged, the LA has to carry out a reconsideration - if they cannot change the decision, they the papers must be sent to the Tribunal service within a reasonable period, with copies being sent to the appellant and his/her representative.

I do know that the Appeals Guidance Unit at Brum TS recently frew up procedures for dealing with appeals where no subs had been issued due the the massive delays we were experiencing in getting IS/HB submissions issued.

You can ask TS to either direct that the authority issue papers within x amount of time, or simply hear the appeal in the absence of submissions.

“They feel that it is not in the 'best interests' of claimants to be hit with an appeal submission in the post”.

Don’t you just love it? What do they suggest? Delivering the papers one sheet at time so the claimant isn’t overwhelmed? Or have a HB officer to deliver it in person and go through it with them? Or how about an e-mail, or delivering the sub’ via the medium of mime?

I’ve heard some excuses in my time but this is up there with the best of them. Just how condescending can you get to assume that the average punter is not capable of having a basic grasp of the nature of the appeal papers, or to ask for help from an advice service.

All that said, I have certainly come across LAs putting clients through the hoops twice, as in "we have looked at our decision and think it's right, pleae fill in the enclosed it you still want to appeal." That's so even when the original challenge is expressly worded as an appeal. The DWP for this is "we have looked at our decision but have not changed it so we are sending the file to the Tribunals service". It shouldn't be necessary.

However, if you have ever been hit by an appeal submission from some councils (there are London Boroughs out there in particular I can think of...) you might very well feel the inclination to keep them away from your clients at all costs. Hunt the decision and the calculation is only the beginning of it.

ariadne2, you dont happen to mean one of those as being Wandsworth Council do you.....never less than 200 hundred pages most of it not material in anyway.....

I name no names, but there's worse than Wandsworth!

jim further to our phone conversation if you look at HB&CTB(D&A) REGS,Reg 20(9) allows the authority to just dispose of an appeal if the appellant so allows, so your authority seem to be applying a cynical tactic to get rid of there backlog with minimum effort.

Hi Neil, my understanding of 20(9) is that they can only discontinue action if the appellant or rep says so in writing and the appeal is not yet with the trib service, however this authority appears to be discontinuing action if the appellant does nothing.

ps,
if the authority in question is following this thread, I'd be very interested to recieve your contribution,
thanks, Jim

for those of you that subscribe to hbinto, the original post, with the same title, has been copied to the forum there. If the LA in question does respond, it might be more likely thats where they will respond.

Hi Tony
any interesting replies on HBinfo?
who copied my thread?
thanks, Jim

Someone opened a thread having spotted this one. I subsequently posted the link for ease of reference.

For what it's worth, the vast majority of posts on HBINFO very much reflect the view that the LA has not exactly covered itself in glory.....