Relinquished UC claims are ended in AP after request to relinquish

FOI response to our very own Charles setting out why DWP guidance has been changed so that where a claimant relinquishes a UC claim, payment stops in assessment period after request to relinquish -

I have spoken to one of my Policy colleagues about your question, and he has confirmed that the policy intention is that a UC claimant should not be left with a recoverable overpayment when they relinquish entitlement to benefit. There is clear case law that says that an award cannot be relinquished for a past period – relinquishment is always prospective rather than retrospective. If we always use the start of the AP in which the notification of relinquishment is received as the effective date of supersession, we are essentially forcing the claimant to relinquish benefit from a date in the past, which is contrary to the case law.

There’s been an update to A4130

Described in the summary of changes as follows:
A4130 –  Relinquishment in UC, the guidance has been changed back to its original format. In September 2019 the guidance was amended to say that the date of change for UC cases is the first day of the AP that follows the one in which the decision is made. This was on the basis that the claimant cannot surrender benefit for a past period. In UC Live Service, this could have occurred if the award was superseded from the first day of the AP in which the decision was made. This is because payments were sometimes issued before the end of the AP. In UC Full Service (Digital), payment is not made until the first day of the next AP. This means that a supersession carried out from the first day of the AP in which the decision was made, will not result in payment being surrendered for a past period.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/968058/adm-summary-of-changes.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/968051/adma4-10-03-21.pdf

I’ll admit to being a bit confused.

The point, as I had understood it from the FOI response, is that they were not applying the ordinary rule that the decision takes effect from the start of the AP in which either the change occurs or decision is made because of the ” clear case law” which said you can’t relinquish entitlement for a past period.

So if we imagine someone has an AP running from 16th to 15th and they decide they don’t want UC on 04/04/21 - lets assume that the decision to supersede is made the same day. If the supersession is applied from the start of the AP (i.e. 16/03/21 - 15/03/21) then they have been permitted to relinquish an entitlement from the 16/03/21. That includes the past period of 16/03/21 - 03/04/21. So the way I understood it, this is what is “contrary to case law” (I will confess that I haven’t sat down and read all the relinquishment cases for a while…)

But the approach of the memo seems to be that relinquishing benefit for a past period is perfectly fine - as long as we are talking about part of an AP. It only becomes a problem if the claimant has already been paid. Apparently there was some prospect in live service that you could be paid before your entitlement for the AP arose which is no longer true in full service. So “forcing the claimant to relinquish benefit from a date in the past” is OK, as long as you are just talking about a legal entitlement rather than paying the DWP back from actual pounds in their pocket.

This is hardly the defining issue of our times, but it’s a bit hard to see the logic.