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DWP appealing bedroom tax First Tier Tribunal appeals to the Upper Tribunal
Does anybody happen to have any information about how aggressively, and how successfully, the DWP is appealing FTT bedroom tax appeals to the Upper Tribunal?
Someone from Oldham Council’s benefits service tells me that the DWP have told them to report to them every bedroom tax appeal they get. I believe they have done the same with all local authorities. But up to January, only one in Oldham had been granted permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. I have myself won the one bedroom tax appeal of mine that has gone to a hearing so far, on 4th January. But it seems (according to one of my colleagues) the DWP are taking 8 weeks to look at appeal decisions and decide whether to ask for the statement of reasons. This would mean they are out of time. Now, I can’t imagine the Tribunals Service entertaining many welfs who applied for reasons out of time, unless they had a good reason for the delay, and that would not include any administrative failing on the part of the welf or their organisation. Is the Tribunals Service more amenable to late requests from the DWP? I don’t know, I can only wonder.
I am minded to send a Freedom of Information Act request to the DWP to find out the answer to my question, but I have a suspicion they will find an excuse not to answer it if they don’t want it known.
So, what experience do people have of the DWP getting permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal so far? Or of how many applications they are making?
I’ve won two so far - one in early December and the other in mid February. Statement of reasons for the December one was requested about a month ago by DWP.
Nothing since then but I know it’s likely to take a while for the SOR to be prepared.
I’ve won two so far - one in early December and the other in mid February. Statement of reasons for the December one was requested about a month ago by DWP.
Nothing since then but I know it’s likely to take a while for the SOR to be prepared.
What was the basis of your argument? Lost a BT appeal yesterday. I argued room size, definition of bedroom as per Bolton case and Article 8 & 14 HRA 1998.
Also argued articles 17, 19 and 22 of European convention 2006
The judge when giving her decision said she was not allowed to give decision regarding our argument. Have requested statement of reasons. Is this a policy decision or guidance from the DWP.
[ Edited: 4 Mar 2014 at 09:26 am by Lawtcrav ]Does anybody happen to have any information about how aggressively, and how successfully, the DWP is appealing FTT bedroom tax appeals to the Upper Tribunal?
Someone from Oldham Council’s benefits service tells me that the DWP have told them to report to them every bedroom tax appeal they get. I believe they have done the same with all local authorities. But up to January, only one in Oldham had been granted permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. I have myself won the one bedroom tax appeal of mine that has gone to a hearing so far, on 4th January. But it seems (according to one of my colleagues) the DWP are taking 8 weeks to look at appeal decisions and decide whether to ask for the statement of reasons. This would mean they are out of time. Now, I can’t imagine the Tribunals Service entertaining many welfs who applied for reasons out of time, unless they had a good reason for the delay, and that would not include any administrative failing on the part of the welf or their organisation. Is the Tribunals Service more amenable to late requests from the DWP? I don’t know, I can only wonder.
I am minded to send a Freedom of Information Act request to the DWP to find out the answer to my question, but I have a suspicion they will find an excuse not to answer it if they don’t want it known.
So, what experience do people have of the DWP getting permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal so far? Or of how many applications they are making?
I’ve won two so far - one in early December and the other in mid February. Statement of reasons for the December one was requested about a month ago by DWP.
Nothing since then but I know it’s likely to take a while for the SOR to be prepared.
What was the basis of your argument? Lost a BT appeal yesterday. I argued room size, definition of bedroom as per Bolton case and Article 8 & 14 HRA 1998.
Also argued articles 17, 19 and 22 of European convention 2006
The judge when giving her decision said she was not allowed to give decision regarding our argument. Have requested statement of reasons.
They were both couples who can’t share due to disabilities. The argument was breach of Article 14 of the Human Rights Act as outlined in Article 8 and breach of Article 1 of the First Protocol of HRA.
In the second one I also made the case that it wasn’t in the economic interests of the country for the HRA not to overrule the HB Regs as the level of formal intervention in the form of care services to the disabled person had significantly lessened since he moved in with his partner. His partner (who was the claimant) was very clear at the tribunal that he would be unable to continue to manage the situation if he didn’t have his own space for at least some of the time. (Even though he gets up at night when his partner does he is able to get some rest when his partner is asleep that he wouldn’t get if he had to sleep with his partner because of his partner’s restlessness.)
We’ve only had the decision notice so far (waiting with bated breath for the SOR request!) and this states:
‘In terms of section 3(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998 Regulation B13(5)(a) of the Housing Benefit Regulations 2006 can and should be read as follows: “(a) a couple (within the meaning of Part 7 of the Act) (or one member of a couple who cannot share a bedroom because of severe disability).” Not to so read it would be incompatible with the appellant’s rights under Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights read with Article 1 of the First Protocol of the European Convention of Human Rights.’
I’ve not done any for any other reason yet.
The one bedroom tax appeal I won was about room use (it’s the Rochdale case on the Nearly Legal website). I was going to argue disability discrimination as well, but didn’t do a full argument on that in the end because I didn’t think I know enough about human rights law. But since there had been a few successful appeals already on the basis of room use, I was confident of winning just on that.
It does look like the DWP are taking 8 weeks to ask for statement of reasons, which does mean they are out of time. One thing that concerns me is that, while a decision is being appealed to the Upper Tribunal, the tenant who won the First Tier appeal can’t get their backdated housing benefit, and some will still be running up rent arrears because they can’t afford the shortfall. I’m minded to chase the local authority for the backdated payment if neither they nor the DWP have asked for the statement of reasons by the 5th week after the decision, as they are supposed to do.
Statement of reasons received today…...
In the first case, although it took a while, the HB has been backdated and our tenant now has a 14% deduction applied instead of the 25% we started with. Still waiting for the second one (which IMHO is a much stronger case) but it’s not been 4 weeks from the date of decision yet.
I liked this….
‘didn’t do a full argument on that in the end because I didn’t think I know enough about human rights law’ - I almost totally robbed all the Human Rights arguments and read and re-read the legislation before the tribunal until I could almost quote it verbatim - doesn’t mean I totally got the legal arguments though! I started the first tribunal just wanting to say ‘it’s not fair!!’ I didn’t think that would help tho…..
The trouble with studying law is, I have come to appreciate how complicated it is and I have become more reluctant to jump into areas I’m not well trained in. But since that BT appeal I have also read up on all the arguments I can find, plus read the “Human Rights Toolkit” book which my office happened to have a copy of. So, I am now more prepared to jump into human rights argments. Even if I do risk getting shot down…congratulations on winnning your appeal, btw.
I was invoved in the FtT and UT of Gorry VDWp, and then CPAG took it up, and the point being as long as you have the outline of the HRA arguement then it is reasonable to expect some assistance of the Judge, especially at UT level. i had a rude judge at the Ftt but stood my ground, and the UT judge was helpful, remember these people receive 6 figure sums, and it is not unreasonable to highlight your lack of knowledge and request their assitant , after all it is an inquisitorial process, equality of Arms etc,
Entirely off topic. Neil, I’d seen your posts and wondered whether it was you, the Gorry refernce clinches it! Sainsbury’s loss is Aster’s gain apparently… how are you doing? It would be good to hear from you .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).