Child Support Payment Disregard

Hi

I’m looking to find out when the Child Support Payment disregard for means-tested benefits was introduced? Also does anyone know what the position was in 1998/1999, were child support payments counted in full or was there a partial disregard?

Cheers
Sam

Further to Paul’s answer..

There was a £20 disregard from Oct 2008

A £10 disregard (‘child maintenance premium’) was brought in with in The Social Security (Child Maintenance Premium and
Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2000 ...

(see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2000/uksi_20003176_en.pdf )

.. but that only applied to ‘new scheme’ child support (ie post 3/3/3 ).

I don’t think there was any disregard (for IS) back in 1998/99.

Does anyone know what the chances of getting a backdate based on this are ?

I have a client who received IS until December 2009 when she was refused as her child maintenance (with £20 disregard) took her over the applicable amount. In April she became entitled again but had no awareness of this.

I told her this week to make a fresh claim and request the maximum 3 month backdate - but not knowing about entitlement isn’t generally a good argument for that (though client is also a single mother who moved house in the middle of the period in question so there’s that to argue too). I

t just seems so unreasonable that she was refused benefit only 4 months before but no steps were taken (as far as we are aware) to tell her when she became entitled again…

Victoria J

There is a good case to argue that regulations 19(4) and 19(5)(d)of the Claims and Payments Regulations apply.

The disallowance on the earlier claim was information from the DWP that led your client to believe (albeit correctly at that time) that she was not entitled to income support.

She could not reasonably be expected to claim earlier than she did because no one (presumably) told her about the legislation changing in April 2010..

CIS/3994/1998 (confirmed in CIS/815/2004) is authority that 19(5)(d) can apply where the information that led the client to believe she was not entitled to income support was correct at the time it was given.

Once it is established that she has received such information (and there is no doubt that she did in this case), the focus falls on 19(4), whether as a result of that circumstance she could not reasonably have been expected to make the claim earlier than she did

Brian

Thank you Brian. That is exactly what I needed and will be really useful if we need to appeal.

My gut feeling is that they will pay in this case, accepting even fairly weak personal “good cause” rather than addressing this point. It will be interesting to see.

The 3 month backdate will still leave my client without her correct entitlement for over a month. Compensation payments do sound nice don’t they, even if not realistic. I am really angry now I know that they were aware of the forthcoming change before the date her IS was stopped.

In this instance I wasn’t the first to tell the client - apparently CSA identified it !

Victoria J

The client has been awarded IS but only from the date of claim.

She’s at the edge of our area and her claim is not processed by the Job Centre we have the best links with. It’s POSSIBLE that they are still considering the backdate but the decision letter doesn’t mention it so it looks like it’s time to start reviewing…

I’ve passed all your information to the benefit worker who will be taking the case. (I’m slightly jealous) I’m watching carefully and I will let people know what happens.

Victoria J