Extended payment - work lasts longer than expected

Help with this please?

JSA stops as claimant takes up full-time work. He would have qualifed for an EP but he only expected the work to last 3 weeks and heroically told Housing Benefit this. About two weeks in it became clear that in fact the work would last longer - he ended up doing almost 6 months.

LA decided he was overpaid HB for the 3 weeks after JSA ended.

Any way round the fact that at the time he stopped his JSA claim he only expected 3 weeks of work?

The work must be expected to last 5 weks or more, that appears to me to be an ojective test,  Reg72(1) does not provide that “the claimant must expect…”

However, that may be clutching at straws because the expectation must be at the time the work commenced or the hours increased.  It is admittedly in a very different context, but I think the general principle is the same, but Mr Commissioner Johnson held at para 5 of R(A)1/94

“5.  I have been assisted in this sad case by the submission dated 2 October 1992 on behalf of the Secretary of State for Social Security. It is submitted that the DMP should have directed his mind to the position as it was at the date of the application for review, 28 January 1991, rather than, as was in fact the case, the irrelevant consideration that, by the date of the determination, Shaun had lived for more than six months. Section 35(2C) of the 1975 Act provided that a person was “terminally ill” if:
“... he suffers from a progressive disease and his death in consequence of that disease can reasonably be expected within six months.”
Dr. Campbell’s attention was drawn neither to the precise issues nor to the relevant date upon which his opinion, and prognosis, was sought”

There may be some mileage in arguing that the overpayment arose through official error (delay either by the DWP in passing on information or the LA) acting on it and may not be recoverable given that from 22 Dec 2008 Reg 88(6) provides

“4(6) Where–
(a) the claimant or the claimant’s partner is in receipt of income support or jobseeker’s allowance;
(b) the change of circumstance is that the claimant or the claimant’s partner starts employment; and
(c) as a result of that change of circumstance, either entitlement to that benefit will end or, where the claimant or claimant’s partner is in receipt of a contribution-based jobseeker’s allowance, the amount of that benefit will be reduced, the claimant may discharge the duty in paragraph (1) by notifying the change of circumstance by telephoning the appropriate DWP office if a telephone number has
been provided for that purpose.”

Thanks for the suggestion - I’ll take a look at the recoverablility but suspect will be sunk by the ‘reasonably have been expected to realise it was an overpayment’ leg of the test….