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Bedroom tax exemption backdate
Client got full hb. Thought the council knew her elder daughter had moved out but they didn’t. This resulted in an overpayment due to her now having a spare room for the past 2 years and so she has been charged bedroom tax. We told council her 2 sons need seperate rooms due to health problems and they have always been on dla. They did a home visit and accepted this and stopped the bed tax on going. However they are refusing to retrospectively accept they needed seperate rooms as she never told them.
Err, two words: underlying entitlement. The overpayment should be reduced to zero on the basis that they would have been entitled to the money anyway. Seems like an open and shut case to me.
Err, two words: underlying entitlement. The overpayment should be reduced to zero on the basis that they would have been entitled to the money anyway. Seems like an open and shut case to me.
that makes sense to me - but they said it is something you have to ask for because they have to assess the situation at the time and they do a visit to decide if they accept they need separate rooms, in addition to having to have DLA. it is not an automatic entitlement if the children get DLA.
that makes sense to me - but they said it is something you have to ask for because they have to assess the situation at the time….......
Utter rubbish, if the entitlement would have been the same, a bit lower or even higher than previously calculated (Before the decision there was overpaid benefit) then have to reduce the overpayment by whatever the entitlement should have been. Point them to HB reg 104. They cannot make any payments over and above the overpayment when it is recalculated.
Sums to be deducted in calculating recoverable overpayments
104.—
(1) Subject to paragraph (2), in calculating the amount of a recoverable
overpayment, the relevant authority shall deduct any amount of housing benefit which
should have been determined to be payable 1to the person from whom the
overpayment is recoverable or their partner in respect of the whole or part of the
overpayment period–
(a) on the basis of the claim as presented to the authority;
(b) on the basis of the claim as it would have appeared had any misrepresentation
or non-disclosure been remedied before the decision; or
(c) on the basis of the claim as it would have appeared if any change of
circumstances2, except a change of the dwelling which the claimant occupies
as his home, had been notified at the time that change occurred.
(2) In the case of rent rebate only, in calculating the amount of a recoverable
overpayment the relevant authority may deduct so much of any payment by way of
rent in respect of the overpayment period which exceeds the amount, if any, which the
claimant was liable to pay for that period under the original erroneous decision.
The whole notion of HB Officers “doing visits” to ascertain whether a bedroom can be reasonably shared intrigues me. Not something my authority does. How much time does the officer spend there in order to be able to form a view on this? What’s their expertise to be able to determine this anyway?
Surely they should be looking at the medical evidence from the relevant experts? They could also ask the claimant to describe the issues which make the disabled child unable to share.
[ Edited: 28 Jul 2017 at 02:13 pm by andyrichards ]I believe they have to sleep overnight in the room. I agree with H B Anorak: the only difficulty I could see with underlying entitlement is if the children didn’t have DLA right from the start of the decision: if not then the room hasn’t changed and their condition hasn’t changed so there wouldn’t be any reason why they shouldn’t have separate rooms.
So essentially they are saying it’s a question of evidence: at this distance in time they do not see how it is possible to determine that the children have needed separate bedrooms for the last two years, because the circumstances observed recently might not have obtained throughout the overpayment period? Well, there is a right to appeal the overpayment if it really has to come to that. It should be easy enough to build a convincing balance of probability case based on details of the condition and what would normally be expected to happen with that condition, together with the claimant’s credible and well marshalled evidence of how things have been for the past two years. Reasons for her not mentioning this sooner are obvious (didn’t see what she would gain as already on full HB) but also largely irrelevant: the failure to mention this sooner is only material in that the Council might perhaps rely on it to argue “it cannot have been all that bad if you never mentioned it” ... but easily rebutted by pointing out that the claimant saw no reason to mention something that could not at the time have affected her HB.
brilliant - thanks everyone