IS refusal where CHB not in payment to IS claimant

Hello

We are currently assisting a client to appeal a decision not to award Income Support on the basis that our client is not the claimant of Child Benefit for his 2 children.
The client seperated from his partner on 12/01/11 and became solely responsible for his 2 children aged 2 and 6 on this date. His IS claim was treated as made on 13/01/11.
This claim has been turned down as the client is not in receipt nor had claimed the CHB at this time.
We tried to argue that he was in receipt of CHB as his ex-ptnr had requested payment of CHB to his bank account and we could show the payments going to his account however the DWP have countered that with CIS/2317/2006.

It is clear to everyone except the DWP that the client is responsible for the children and he has now claimed CHB for the children. The reason he had not in the past was that he had been advised by CHB of their long processing times and he had no other money to live on.

Basically we are trying to find another way of challenging the decision and wonder if there is any caselaw that would support an award of IS where the client is clearly responsible for the child, even if someone else was claiming the CHB.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

I’ve had similar cases and have not been able to find anything to base IS appeal on. Your best bet is for client to claim JSA until CB is in payment, and request backdating to date of original IS claim on basis that he was misadvised (claim for IS could not have succeeded and he should have been advised to claim JSA when he rang the contact centre).