Hi, don't know if i'm just being daft here but here goes:-

I have a client who has received an overpayment of IS because her Incapacity Benefit increased from Short term lower to short term higher and she didn't notify the IS section of the change. Am i just being naive in saying that they would know about this change through their own system and should've actioned the change accordingly? Or are they just going to come back with the old "it's the claimants responsibility to notify us of any change of circs"?

I would be grateful of any suggestions as to how i may be able to challenge this overpayment.

Thank you.

Initial thoughts...

If IB and IS were paid seperately then probably recoverable as, and I'm afraid no references to hand, the obligation is to report changes to the particular department paying the benefit.

However, if IS and IB were paid together (i.e. this is your income support and includes any IB you might be entitled to) then your client has a much better case because IS already knows about the change and a cliamant cannot fail to disclose something of which the department is already aware.

I'm sure you'll find references to both these pionts in the annotation to s.71.

In having a quick look through the annotation though, I found CIS/1887/2002 and CSB/0677/1986 which considered, favourably, similar circumstances as you describe.

As Tony says, CIS 1887/02 is relevant. It was effectively held that the claimant had no duty to inform the DWP of a change of circs if the the interconnected benefits were being dealt with by a single local office at the same address. Generally the DWP gives clients a single contact centre number (which could be a virtual contact centre) and a single postal address (often a Royal Mail box number) for IS/JSA/IB/ESA etc, and the client has no way of knowing whether the various sections are physically located in the same building or not. It would be reasonable for him to assume that they were, and that he could therefore rely on one section sharing information with another.