CTR and UC interaction (wales); when should a claim close?

Hi there
Ive got a client claiming UC with LCWRA.  She also gets CTR (wales)
She did a short job for a relatively big payment which reduced her UC award in May 2023, but from, June no work, max UC payment.
The council received the info from UC and the CTR award was reassessed.  For CTR purposes, her income was too high for any award in May. 
Her CTR claim was closed.  The claimant immediately provided information to CTR about her new income (i.e. none) and all the subsequent UC statements showing this.
Her local authority say:
a) they have received no info from UC since May
b) once your Council Tax Reduction entitlement reduces to £0.00, your claim is ended, and cannot remain open for any future changes.
Is that correct? They are now saying she has to make a new claim.  Will she have to make a new claim to CTR each time this happens in future? 
I thought there was an automatic update from UC to CTR?  Does it stop in certain circs? Where can I find the info?
I don’t know where to look re. her rights either – cant find the LA scheme so just loked at the default scheme (CPAG legislation handbook).  Cant see anything on when claims should close.  Should I be looking at general SS legislation and if so which one?
Thanks for your input in advance.
EKS

The default Welsh CTR regulations ( which are very likely to apply, although I’m working from our consolidation of them so they’re not KP certain) say, firstly

Calculation of income and capital: persons who are not pensioners who have an award of universal credit
34 .—(1) In determining the income of an applicant—
(a) who has, or
(b) who (jointly with a partner) has,
an award of universal credit the authority must, subject to the following provisions of this paragraph, use the calculation or estimate of the income of the applicant, or the applicant and the applicant’s partner jointly (as the case may be), made by the Secretary of State for the purpose of determining the award of universal credit.

So if UC is in payment, as is the case, the the LA have to use a figure from UC, unless she is passported in some way.

I’m having to leave now but I’d suggest looking at whether reg. 93 on Extended reductions: persons who are not pensioners might apply.  I’m afraid that I don’t have time now or for the next couple of days to dig into it.  You need to look at the Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Default Scheme) (Wales) 2013 No. 3035 (W. 303) or Rheoliadau Cynlluniau Gostyngiadau’r Dreth Gyngor (Cynllun Diofyn) (Cymru) 2013 (where there are any differences the Welsh text applies).

Most, if not all, CTR schemes require you to make a new claim if entitlement ends (although I think some Councils allow a claim for UC to stand as a claim for CTR as well).

The question here may be whether her providing details of her income in subsequent months should have been treated as a new claim.

A recent LA Welfare Direct summary of UC reclaims and potential for CTR auto reclaims, explains the nuts and bolts of who is told what and when and how the system fails if an LA relies on a Searchlight flag to initiate an auto reclaim -

Where a UC claim ends, for some LAs, this also results in an end to the LCTR claim and, therefore, an automatic end to the LCTR interest on Searchlight.

If the claimant then restarts UC at a later date within a 6-month period, they don’t go through the full UC application process and there is then no question for them to indicate that they intend to reapply for LCTR. So, the LCTR interest is not automatically re-set on Searchlight.

The implications for some LAs are that they treat new UC claims as an application for LCTR but because they don’t receive re-application notifications (within that 6-month window) they wouldn’t know about them and, therefore, wouldn’t know to re-start LCTR payments.

DWP seems pretty clear it is not planning a fix any time soon -

... we can only have one national data share, designed in a way that supports all LAs. Unfortunately, we cannot share data in 350 different ways for 350 LCTR scheme designs.