Reg 6 (1A) Claims and Payments regs problem....

The reg basically provides that a claim will run from the date of the appropriate office receiving notification of intention to claim, provided that the properly completed form is received in said office within one month of the date of that same notification of intent.

Seems straightforward (and fairly inflexible) but does not take account of the changes that have come about with the advent of telephone claiming and the fact that in some areas only telephone claims are now accepted. Scenario as follows...

Client notifies intention to claim 22/2/07. Taunton do not phone her back to take the claim until 9/3/07 and do not post the claim out for her to sign (together with request for documents to verify claim) until 12/3/07. Earliest she could have received this was 13/3/07 - but she is still only given until 22/3/07 to return the form. Does so on 23/3/07 and so payment from the latter date only.

The reg doesn't appear to leave me a great deal of wriggle room on this one - that said, I'm loathe to let it drop. The fact that the DWP didn't get around to posting out the telephone claim until 12/3/07 ought to mean she should be given until 12/4/07 to return - but "ought" in the moral sense. Looks like my client might be stuffed.

Any useful thoughts? Decisions?

Ta.

Compensation.

I have also found a couple of times that where claims are referred to the local Jobcentre Plus for interview or further query, the Jobcentre are sitting on them for weeks. When the problem is finaly resolved - the claim is eventually sent to the processing centre and the date of claim is the date the claim is received by the processing centre. This is despite the fact that final evidence was provided to the Jobcentre weeks beforehand and that no indication was made that time limits had been overstretched.

trip to TAS ?

"trip to TAS?" my favoured solution, too.

Problem is, my reading of the reg is that it doesn't leave any room for the one month to be extended in circumstances where the DWP have themselves delayed taking the telephone claim and sending the "customer statement"/claim out to the claimant. The way the reg is worded, they could, in theory, delay so that you receive the damn thing with only one day left in which to take it in to the local office - and any failure would still be down to you.

I am loathe to bugger about with a compensation claim, but I think Martin may well be right.

I might have a pop at arguing that reg 4(5)'s mandatory terms (they have to send you out a claim form when you notify them you want to claim) is such that it is clearly not intended that the department only have to comply when they feel like getting round to it.....

i suppose no grounds for back-dating?

Nothing that I can see under reg 19 (6)&(7), unfortunately.

get a few examples together for JR?