I am encountering several people who have failed to notify the relevant department (DWP and / or Housing Benefit) when their disabled child leaves education and becomes an adult non dependent. One is at the appeal stage and I know there is a "continuous good cause" argument i can use where clients have health problems themselves / literacy issues. is there anything else i can use? Is the disability of the child themselves relevant i.e. on leaving education, they should have made claims eg for ESA. If i could get that backdated, that could help.

I presume that you are talking about overpayments that have arisen because of the loss of premiums/allowances and in HB or DWP housing costs cases because of non-dependent deductions.On the evidence you have given there can be no argument that an overpayment has happened and the only issue is whether it has to be paid back.

The rules are likely to be different for DWP and HB. For DWP benefits, an overpayment of benefit is not repayable unless it arose from (in these circumstances) a failure to disclose a material fact - one which would affect the payment of benefits. Claimants of these benefits are usually issued with a leaflet listing "changes you must tell us about". If they have been given such a leaflet, and the change is unambiguously in the leaflet, then they have failed to disclose and that's that. Issue of literacy, sadly, do not arise (the leading case on this, Re B, involved a woman with learning disabilities and that was held to be no excuse). All you can hope for is that they were never given such a leaflet (unlikely) or that the information they are told to disclose is ambiguous.

With housing benefit, the rule is if anything stricter. All housing benefit overpayments are recoverable, unless they arose exclusively because of an official error to which the claimant did not contribute.

I don't know what you are thinking about on "continuous good cause". That expression has a very specific meaning in relation to late claims for benefits, and the circumstances in which backdating is possible. It used to apply to all benefits, but for many years now it has only applied to housing.council tax benefit late claims (DWP benefits have a completely different set of rules).

The only other way in is to be sure that the original decision awarding benefit has been correctly revised or superseded to take entitlement away. No overpayment can be recovered unless that has been done. You may also need to check the amount of the overpayment as local authorities especially often get the figures wrong.

I'm afraid that these technicalities are extremely complicated and you really need at least the CPAG handbook, a free hour or so and a large mug of tea or something a little more stimulating!

not good news then but thanks anyway