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Fraud: Living in a house with Landlord.as a family or not. 

Unite1
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Employment law & benefit appeal rep, the Initiative Factory, Liverpool

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I have a client who is being investigated for fraud because DWP believe he lived with his landlord as a family.
The client is a young person who left care when he was 16. He was placed with his landlord by a project that places vulnerable young people with caring landlords. Immediately HB is paid. The project is approved by the LA and the DWP.However, because he has lived there for over 15 years on and off. Recently, he received £14k because he was never paid the SDP. Obviously, the FOs have come after him because of this.
My client is now living with his 5 year old child. For the preceding years he lived with his father and the landlord. However, the LA looks after the child. The child calls the landlord “granddad” .
Is there a test, similar to LTAMAW, which has been formulated by the Commissioners and/or UT?

[ Edited: 21 Sep 2017 at 09:42 pm by Unite1 ]
ClairemHodgson
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Unite1 - 20 September 2017 09:48 PM

Is there a test, similar to LTAMAW, which has been formulated by the Commissioners and/or UT?

no, in short.  there is only Living together as Husband and Wife (or civil partners of course).

No court can make law in this area, they can only interpret the law as set out in statute.

presumably you can prove the original placement circumstances, and it’s easy to show that they are not family properly so called.

seems to me more like the DWP are inventing law

and just because a 5 year old calls a non relative “grandad” doesn’t make the DWP any case at all…...

Elliot Kent
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For SDP purposes, the “members of your family” are your partner and any children for whom you are responsible (see p246 CPAG).

I imagine that the DWP angle will be that the landlord counts as a non-dependant so the SDP wasn’t properly payable. At the moment, he is probably not regarded as a non-dependant because he is a person who is renting the property to the claimant on a commercial basis (see p245) - so the attack would be to the “commerciality” of the rental agreement. This could have a knock-on effect for the HB claim as a non-commercial agreement isn’t covered by HB.

The relationship between the claimant and the landlord is one aspect of commerciality and there is plenty of caselaw on this. See Table 2.4 of Lister and Ward’s Guide to Housing Benefit and HK v South Hams District Council (HB) [2017] UKUT 254 (AAC)  for some pointers.

Could be other angles to it that I’m not thinking of.

Wouldn’t it have been sensible to investigate entitlement before handing over the £14k?

Unite1
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Employment law & benefit appeal rep, the Initiative Factory, Liverpool

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Thanks for both responses. I have come across a commissioners’ decision which cites a regulation, which states a foster child is not to be treated as a member of the family for HB purposes. Given the ethos of the project is for young vulnerable people 16 plus coming out of care or a quasi-fostering arrangement, if necessary I will argue this point. However, I agree with bother your comments apart from the questionable SDP. My client rents a self contained room from the landlord in a tenancy agreement approved by the LA. Therefore, I believe he’s entitled to the SDP throughout the period because he can be treated as living alone. I welcome arguments against this please?

[ Edited: 23 Sep 2017 at 04:58 pm by Unite1 ]