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bedroom tax, disabled child sharing
Forgive me if this has been addressed but I am a little confusaed. My in house information system is telling me that since the Govt backed away from the legal chllenge a room is allowed for a disabled child if appropriate, but I keep coming across contrary opinions that say it is not settled yet. I have a client with a child with high care needs on DLA but my LA has not yet accepted that h eshould get his own room !!!
In Bulletin U2/2013 DWP has very publicly committed itself to the view that local authorities may award extra bedrooms outside the HB Regulations in a case where a disabled child is considered unable to share a bedroom with a same-sex sibling. So any local authority following this advice is covered in terms of subsidy/audit come-back.
Personally I think U2/2013 is nonsense - the Court of Appeal decision it relies on does not allow local authorities to pay extra benefit to anyone. The court essentially said:
- the LHA size criteria (and by extension the identical bedroom tax size criteria) violated the human rights of three appellants (only one of whom had disabled children, by the way: the scope of the decision is wider than DWP suggests in the bulletin) by failing to discriminate positively
- this was declared to be A Bad Thing
- the Secretary of State was invited to remedy the situation because local authorities have no option but to follow the Regs
The court emphatically did not come up with an interpretation of the offending Regs that would allow them to be applied in an HR-compliant way.
It is significant that the UT judge in the Burnip case (when it was still at that level) remarked that even if he had not found the discrimination to be justified he didn’t really see what he could do about it.
As long as people are getting extra benefit, everyone’s happy, but the problem arises when a local authority decides a case does not fall within the scope of bulletin U2/2013 and has to back up its case at a Tribunal. This is when the whole sorry mess will unravel.
Link to the offending bulletin here:
In Bulletin U2/2013 DWP has very publicly committed itself to the view that local authorities may award extra bedrooms outside the HB Regulations in a case where a disabled child is considered unable to share a bedroom with a same-sex sibling.
They were more definite than ‘may’. The circular says ‘should’ :
“This means that from the date of the Court of Appeal judgment on 15 May 2012, local authorities (LAs) should allow an extra bedroom for children who are unable to share because of their severe disabilities following the guidelines as set out in paragraphs 7 to 10 below.”
(my emphases)
Many thanks to all posters, I have now discussed the guidance with my LA and they say that they are inclined to grant an exemption to my client but just want to see a letter from the GP, school or such like to confirm the level of the child’s problems, so looking more hopeful.They asked for evidence of the DLA award but I pointed out that it is already on their benefit screen which they acccepted.