UC Full Service and Termination of Legacy Benefits

Hi

If a claimant in a full service claims and is awarded UC, their entitlement to legacy benefits ends. However, if they claim and are refused UC, should their legacy benefits continue to be paid? CPAG handbook at the bottom of page 26 states that ‘if you get UC’ after a change of circumstances which triggers a claim for UC, ‘your entitlement to all these [legacy] benefits stops’. Note that it says if you GET UC, not if you CLAIM UC. Unfortunately, this paragraph isn’t referenced. Does anyone have any thoughts? Do you have to have actually been awarded (rather than merely have claimed) UC in order for legacy benefits to be terminated? If so, what regs would you rely on for such an argument? 

Cheers

Alex

Hi Alex
Did you get any update on this?  We are seeing this a lot and are struggling to get our heads round it.  In the scenarios we are seeing the customers are claiming UC as they have come out of work so HB is terminated. But WC are advising customers to withdraw their UC claim and ask for HB to be reinstated- the reason being they are due their last earnings payment and should reclaim UC after they have been paid.

My argument is that this is the wrong advice as they have claimed UC and therefore Reg 8 applies, but as they have withdrawn their claim I don’t know where the customer stands.

I think if the UC claim is withdrawn before it has been decided, that makes it as if the claim was never made in the first place.  HB can indeed then be reinstated until such time as the person makes a further UC claim.  Because HB treats final earnings from work differently, the rate of HB should increase during the interval between leaving work and receiving final earnings.

For some people an immediate UC claim would be the better option - you need to compare the rate of UC including all elements minus earnings taper with the rate of full HB only.

I’ve been looking at this for tax credits.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1230/pdfs/uksi_20141230_311216_en.pdf Regulation 8 seems to cover this situation. It seems the legacy benefits can terminate even if there is no entitlement to UC.

Victoria

The “withdrawn claim” tactic relies on the following interpretation of Reg 8:

- if the UC claim is withdrawn without a decision having been made, it becomes null and void
- without a decision on the UC claim, it is impossible to determine the date on which legacy benefit should end under Reg 8(2)

The clock has effectively been turned back, as if there never was a UC claim.

One rather cheeky tactic, which people tell me has succeeded but which I think should still be filed under “experimental”, is to request a short term advance of UC while the claim is awaiting a decision, bank the advance then withdraw the claim before it gets decided.  If you are lucky DWP will quietly forget about the short term advance because the legacy systems won’t pick it up.  Don’t try this at home without asking a grown up.

Martin looked at this in the CPAG UC seminar last week. If they are refused UC because they don’t meet one of the basic conditions - age, in GB and not in education - then 8(1)(b) wouldn’t be met so legacy benefits wouldn’t be terminated. So if claim failed on R2R basis (which counts as not in GB) then could go back to legacy.

And he agreed with you HBAnorak on the possibly an argument if you withdraw a claim…