HB overpayment due to SP increases

Hi everyone,

Wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of any relevant caselaw for this case:

- Cl received notification of overpayment of HB/CTR, reason given being her State Pension was ‘higher than we have estimated’. After a request for a review, the LA have elaborated, stating ‘every year we have been automatically uprating your State Pension…unfortunately [it increased] by a greater rate than we thought it had’, adding it’s claimants duty to inform office of change of income and check notification letters.

Looking at Shelter’s Guide to Housing Benefit & Council Tax Rebates (Table 18.1, p. 317) it suggests it is pension service’s duty to notify of changes, however no caselaw is referenced. I understand in CH/2554/2002 it was stated ‘a typical claimant cannot reasonably be expected to read or understand the calculations’ but this referred to a case where SP was omitted completely.

Any further ideas? Many thanks :)

That’s a pretty major mistake to make.  It’s also one which, presumably, applied to all SRP recipients in the area.  Is that the case?

I agree it seems like a pretty bizarre mistake, I haven’t heard of any similar cases in the area (as yet).

Any PC in receipt?

Nope, cl has occupational pension as well.

Any Serps / State 2nd pension?

I think the Pension Service duty to notify changes only applies in Pension Credit cases.  Many (most?) local authorities automatically uprate the benefit incomes they hold on their HB caseload, by putting the uprating percentages into the system parameters (he said, trying to sound like an IT expert!)

It saves a lot of time and effort that would otherwise be expended on reassessing cases one-by-one, but it can cause problems if they get it wrong, and I guess particular care is needed when the pension uprating is not the same as other benefits. It also causes problems when someone’s pension or benefit changes in some non-routine way.

Problem is, although there is clearly official error here, the LA can legitimately argue that it doesn’t remove the claimant’s duty to notify, and therefore a claimant will have contributed to the error by not doing so, which thereby makes it claimant error.  Unless of course, the LA put out information to the effect of “don’t worry about telling us about your pension increase, we’ll sort out at our end”, but I suspect they haven’t.  Or the claimant did notify but no-one at the LA doublechecked their own calculations.

Andy is right about the process. LAs either use a percentage or a fixed amount of increase depending upon circumstances.

I also agree that it depends what the Council has told people. If they have said not to bother informing them of SRP increases as they process them automatically, then it looks like LA error.

If, however, they don’t tell people not to notify them then it’s still the claimant’s responsibility and all the Council has done is to reduce the eventual overpayment. Looks like claimant error.

If the claimant notified the Council who then ignored it in favour of their own uprating figure then it looks like LA error.

Thanks guys, I’ve discussed the above with the client, who is still adamant she wants to continue with the appeal. She argues she was not aware of increases to her SRP or private pension, which sounds a little dubious. I was thinking CH/2943/2007 could hold some relevance in making the argument that cl could not have reasonably expected to know that the figures were wrong.

I’d like to know whether it affects all SRP recipients.